Sadly this happens all too often in the industry. Without any more in the way of details, what you describe indeed looks like a "link network".

Google hasnt provided much i the way of support except for their report spam function, which allows you to identify sites that are suspected of link buying / link spamming.

In terms of whether they are planing on releasing an update to the algo to penalise this - we dont know - google doesnt normally tell you what it is or isnt releasing till its hit. However a lot of SEOs who tests stuff like this to see what is hapening have hinted at stronger link detection algos on the horizon.

All the spam reporting that people have been doing goes straight into the algo, and they hardly ever take direct action on such situations.