The UK broadcasting regulator has launched a formal investigation into an allegation that China Global Television Network (CGTN), the international news channel of China Central Television (CCTV), aired a confession forced from a British private investigator while imprisoned in China.

Ofcom said it would investigate whether CGTN, which was launched as CCTV’s new international brand in 2016, had broken the UK broadcasting code. In the UK, CGTN airs on platforms including Sky and Freesat, the free-to-air satellite joint venture run by ITV and the BBC. If found in breach of the code, Ofcom has the power to deliver sanctions ranging from on-air apologies to substantial fines and, in the most serious cases, revoking UK broadcast licences.

The broadcasting regulator has moved to launch an official probe after assessing a fairness and privacy complaint filed by Peter Humphrey in November. “We have decided to investigate a fairness and privacy complaint about news programmes broadcast on CCTV News,” said a spokeswoman for Ofcom. “If we find our rules have been broken, we will take the appropriate action.”

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Humphrey, who worked as a journalist in the 1980s and 90s and was once a fellow at Harvard University, and his American wife, Yu Yingzeng, were imprisoned in China in 2013 on charges of illegally trading in personal information. They subsequently appeared on Chinese state television, and internationally including on its English-language channel broadcast in Britain, making a public confession.

The couple, who operated the Shanghai-based private investigation company ChinaWhys, were arrested as part of an investigation into the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). Chinese security authorities accused GSK of funnelling up to 3bn yuan (£312m) in bribes to doctors and officials through travel agencies and consultancies over six years. In 2014, a Chinese court imposed a $489m (£376m) fine on GSK. The couple were deported from China in June 2015 after their jail terms were reduced.

Under Ofcom’s procedure, complainants are meant to make their submission within 20 working days of the programme they have taken issue with being broadcast. The regulator says it does not normally accept complaints filed after the 20-day window, making acting on Humphrey’s complaint an unusual situation.

Ofcom has received four formal complaints about CCTV allegedly airing forced confessions.

The regulator has used its powers to impose sanctions on broadcasters in cases of forced confessions in the past. Last year, it fined the Saudi-owned news channel Al Arabiya £120,000 for broadcasting “confessions” by an imprisoned opposition leader without making it clear he had been tortured.

In 2011, Press TV, the Iranian state broadcaster’s English-language outlet, was fined £100,000 after the channel aired an interview with Maziar Bahari, an imprisoned Newsweek journalist, that had been conducted under duress. Bahari said he was forced to do a scripted interview with his captors, who threatened to execute him.

A year later, Ofcom revoked Press TV’s UK right to air in the UK because its practice of running editorial oversight from Tehran breached broadcasting licence rules in the UK.

In the UK, CGTN operates out of state-of-the-art purpose-built studios in Chiswick, west London, which opened in December and acts as its European hub. CGTN is considered to be the most high-profile example of China’s rapid media expansion across the world.