(Reuters/Bobby Yip)

Hell hath no fury: 15 percent of whistleblowers who reported cases of Chinese government corruption via the internet over the past year were the unhappy mistresses of party officials.

That figure, from an analysis by the Legal Daily, a publication run by China’s Ministry of Justice, comes with an important caveat: it’s based on a sample of what the publication deems 26 “typical cases” of real-name public reporting. But regardless of the methodology, the study underlines the role that China’s “other women,” (or “little third” as they’re commonly called) are playing in the country’s campaign to rein in graft. ”In China nothing is clear,” Zhu Ruifeng, a blogger whose anti-corruption website features some of the salacious testimonies of these women, told the BBC. “The public don’t know what officials are up to. But mistresses live with government officials, they spend their money, they know about everything that goes on.”

Because these often doomed relationships are so common among officials—they’re even fueling the country’s property bubble—it seems inevitable that ex-flames could turn into angry whistleblowers. A spate of officials have recently lost their jobs because of their extra-marital dalliances. In May, a government energy official was fired after his mistress told Chinese media he had embezzled $200 million from Chinese banks. Last year, a married district-level official in Chongqing stepped down after a a sex tape was released that showed him with a young woman.