July 23 (Bloomberg) -- Search engines in China, including Google Inc.’s local site, are blocking news on a graft case in Namibia involving a company once headed by the son of President Hu Jintao.

Hu Haifeng is the former president of Beijing-based Nuctech Co., a maker of security scanners involved in a corruption probe in Namibia. He is not a suspect in the case, Paulus Noa, director of the African country’s Anti-Corruption Commission said yesterday. Investigators want to talk to him to get information about the company, Noah said.

A search on Google’s Chinese Web site using the characters for “Hu Haifeng” and “Namibia” results in the following message in Chinese: “The search results may involve material that may not be in accordance with relevant laws and regulations, unable to display.” A search in Chinese on Google.com, which is based outside of China, renders over 2,000 results.

The restrictions show the extent to which the government is working to contain news of the case, which may embarrass President Hu as he cracks down on official corruption. A Beijing court this month gave a suspended death sentence for bribery to Chen Tonghai, former chairman of China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., Asia’s largest refiner.

“Google’s operations in all countries worldwide must comply with local laws, regulations and policies,” said Marsha Wang, a Beijing-based spokeswoman for the company. Because of that, “some search results are not shown.”

The blocked searches also show that companies such as Mountain View, California-based Google are under pressure to follow the lead of the Chinese government, said Rebecca MacKinnon, a journalism professor at the University of Hong Kong who is writing a book about China’s control of the Internet.

‘No Recourse’

“When given an order they have no recourse but to follow it,” MacKinnon said in an interview. “My impression is they respond to commands. I don’t get the impression that they are being proactive in censoring.”

A search using the same terms on Beijing-based Baidu Inc.’s Web site garners this message: “The search results may not be in accordance with relevant laws, regulations and policies, can’t display.” Yahoo’s Chinese Web site says: “Sorry, unable to find any results for Hu Haifeng and Namibia.” Hangzhou-based Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. operates Yahoo’s Chinese Web site.

Linda Sun, a Beijing-based spokeswoman for Baidu, didn’t respond to a request for comment. John Spelich, a spokesman for Alibaba in Hong Kong, didn’t immediately return a phone call and e-mail seeking comment.

Two Namibians and a Chinese representative of Nuctech were arrested last week after commission investigators found that a $12.8 million payment to Nuctech for security scanners had been paid to a consulting company, Agence-France Presse reported earlier this week.

-- Michael Forsythe: Editor: Ben Richardson.

To contact Bloomberg News staff on this story: Michael Forsythe in Beijing at +8610-6649-7580 or mforsythe@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 23, 2009 06:29 EDT