MEMBERS of Congress have accused Yahoo! of lying about its co-operation with the Chinese Government in an incident that led to a dissident's imprisonment.

Congressmen said on Tuesday that one of Yahoo!'s executives testified falsely last year about how much it knew about China's 2004 investigation into Shi Tao, a Yahoo! user.

The executive had said the company "had no information about the nature of the investigation" when it received a demand for Mr Shi's email records from China's State Security Ministry. In fact, the demand specifically said the information was for "a case of suspected illegal provision of state secrets", a charge frequently made against dissidents.