The former head of China's powerful Land and Resources Ministry has gone on trial for taking bribes, the government said yesterday, in the country's highest-level graft scandal since a senior legislator was executed in 2001.
Tian Fengshan (
On Tuesday, a trial against him opened at the Beijing Municipal No. 2 Court, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. He is accused of accepting more than 4 million yuan (US$500,000) in bribes between 1995 and 2003, Xinhua said. All the funds have been recovered, it said.
The court heard Tian's defense but has yet to issue a verdict, Xinhua said.
An official who answered the phone at the Beijing Municipal No. 2 Court who refused to give his name confirmed that Tian's case was heard on Tuesday but said he did not know whether the trial was continuing yesterday.
From 1995 to 2000, Tian was the governor of Heilongjiang Province, and then served as Minister for Land and Resources from 2000 to 2003.
The Beijing Morning Post reported yesterday that Tian admitted to all of the 17 cases of bribery raised by the prosecution.
Among those was a 100,000 yuan bribe in 1999 from Ma De, a former Communist Party secretary from Suihua City in Heilongjiang Province, allegedly given in exchange for Tian's help in getting funding for a broadcast building, the paper said.
Ma was sentenced to death with a two year reprieve in July for corruption, the official China Daily newspaper reported earlier. Such suspended death sentences usually are commuted to life in prison if the convict is deemed to have reformed.
The China Daily said in July that Ma escaped execution because he cooperated with officials and "exposed the clues of other official's bribery behaviors."
The case against Tian is China's highest-level graft scandal since a deputy chairman of its legislature was executed in 2001 on charges of bribe-taking.
Tian's former deputy in Heilongjiang, Zhu Shengwen, committed suicide in prison in December 2003, state media said. He had claimed at his 1998 trial that he was tortured into confessing, according to human rights groups.
Zhu was convicted amid an anti-corruption crackdown in China's northeast, a region known as the nation's rustbelt for its moribund heavy industries. Many cases involved accusations that local officials were stealing state assets in collusion with organized crime.
Corruption is widespread in China, and top officials have expressed fears that endemic graft could undermine Communist Party rule.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of