Dirty Business

In its never-ending battle against venality, Hong Kong's much feared Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) regularly investigates the city's most nefarious industries. It should be well prepared, then, for its latest target: Canto-pop. Responding to complaints that music-industry players offered favors to TV executives in exchange for promotion of particular artists' songs on a music-chart show, the ICAC launched a full-scale investigation of Hong Kong's entertainment world last Wednesday and has since arrested some 28 industry bigwigs. Those arrested include singer Juno Mak; his father Clement Mak, the chairman of CCT Telecom, which owns Mak's management company, Mellow Studio; Alex Chan, the president of Mak's record label, Universal Music Hong Kong; three staff members of local broadcaster TVB; and Albert Yeung, the founder of Emperor Entertainment Group. Several of Yeung's stars, including Eason Chan, Nicholas Tse and Joey Yung, were spotted at ICAC offices and were thought to be among the 29 other show-biz folk brought in for questioning. It appears that record companies may have paid off TVB personnel in exchange for gaining top placement for particular artists on the network's weekly music-chart show, Jade Solid Gold, which puts singers on the inside track for TVB's annual award ceremony. Juno Mak, who appeared numerous times on Jade Solid Gold, won one TVB award this year despite a decidedly hostile reaction from the award ceremony's in-house audience. TVB declined to comment to TIME, but according to local reports, the network is considering changing the way it selects performers for the music-chart show.

On Saturday, the ICAC announced it was expanding its investigation to include allegations of share-price rigging at a pair of unidentified listed companies. Canto-pop might promote itself as bubblegum clean, but as the ICAC's ongoing investigation shows, the world behind the music is a whole lot stickier.