State-owned oil giant Sinopec has denied rumors that a supplier bribed a female company official with sexual favors, allegedly winning the supplier a lucrative contract.

The company released the information through the official micro blog of a newspaper it runs.

In response to the online accusation of her accepting sexual bribes during a construction bidding, the division chief of Sinopec denounced the charge as pure fabrication on Thursday and said that she has reported it to police, Beijing News reported on Friday.

According to the statement on the official micro blog, the picture in the online article that depicts a woman sitting with a man who is bare to the waist was originally published on a news website in 2007, accompanying a report on male sex workers in Shenzhen, Guangdong province.