Edelman China chief missing amid probe into detained TV anchor

The China head of Edelman, the US public relations group, has been missing for more than a week following a police investigation into the agency's links to a disgraced television presenter.

Edelman said Steven Cao, its China group chief executive, was helping police with their inquiries. Representatives of Edelman said they had not been in contact with Mr Cao in several days and did not know his whereabouts.

"It is our understanding that Steven Cao is co-operating with authorities on the investigation," Edelman said.

Mr Cao is a former business partner of Rui Chenggang, a celebrity anchor of a prominent financial news show on China's state-owned CCTV who was detained by police on July 11.

Mr Cao joined Edelman from Pegasus Communications, which he founded with Mr Rui in 2002 and still runs.

After Mr Rui was detained, Chinese state media reported that he had been arrested on corruption charges, and that Pegasus was ensnared in the corruption case against him. Pegasus's Beijing offices were visited by Chinese investigators on July 24, the company said.

In a statement on July 14, US-based Edelman confirmed that in 2007 it had bought a 78 per cent stake in Pegasus, while Mr Rui continued to own an 8 per cent stake until 2010.

Pegasus provided services to CCTV during the 2009 and 2010 World Economic Forums in Davos, Switzerland.

Edelman said that "Pegasus was engaged by corporate sponsors involved in underwriting CCTV's presence at Davos", adding that the group was "taking this matter very seriously" and continuing to gather facts.

"We have not been in contact with Steven, so we don't have any further information about Steven's whereabouts. For now, senior China management is overseeing operations at the company, and business in the country is running as usual," Edelman said.

No official statement has been forthcoming on the detention of Mr Rui or the fate of Mr Cai. Chinese authorities have the legal right to detain someone incommunicado for up to 30 days.

Political observers have connected the case against Mr Rui to political intrigues in the upper echelons of the Chinese elite. Mr Rui appears to have been embroiled in a corruption case built against his former boss, CCTV's financial news channel director Guo Zhenxi, who was arrested in June in a corruption investigation that has ensnared nearly a dozen top CCTV employees.

Family-controlled Edelman is the world's largest public relations group by sales, according to the Holmes Report, an industry survey.

Nearly $100m of its $707m in sales in the year ending June 2013 came from Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

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