A former Chinese Supreme Court judge was sentenced to life in prison yesterday following his conviction for embezzlement and receiving more than half a million dollars in bribes.
Huang Songyou (黃松有) is the latest top official snared in a stepped-up campaign against corruption, which Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) has described as one of the greatest threats to the legitimacy of Chinese Communist Party rule.
Huang is the first judicial official of his stature to be tried and convicted on such charges.
Formally known as the Supreme People’s Court, the body is the highest judicial panel in the country with wide-ranging powers including overseeing lower courts and reviewing death sentences. The court has 13 members, with its grand justice also sitting on the party’s decision-making Central Committee.
Huang’s entire property also was confiscated as part of the ruling, a brief report by the official China News Service said.
Huang, 52, was accused of taking 3.9 million yuan (US$574,000) in bribes from a law firm in return for favorable rulings on cases between 2005 and 2008.
He was also charged with embezzling 1.2 million yuan in government funds while serving as president of a city level court in Guangdong Province in 1997.
Huang was fired and kicked out of the party in August and went on trial last Thursday at the Langfang Municipal Intermediate Court in Hebei Province just outside Beijing. Calls to the court rang unanswered yesterday.
Xinhua news agency said Huang had confessed to the charges during the investigation stage and most of the bribes and embezzled funds had been recovered.
“But as a chief justice, Huang knowingly violated the law by trading power for money and taking a hefty sum of bribes, which has produced a bad impact on the society, and should be punished severely,” Xinhua said, citing the verdict.
It said it wasn’t known whether Huang would appeal.
China hopes such high-profile takedowns of leading party members will scare the rank and file straight.
The People’s Daily said in a commentary on its Web site that the ruling showed no one was exempt from the government’s anti-corruption drive.
“The Langfang Intermediate People’s Court’s ruling on this issue states resoundingly that courts will not tolerate corruption in the administration of justice, no matter who, or at what level the cadres are,” it said.
Hu last week called the fight against corruption a “pressing task”, urging increased efforts to investigate embezzlement and corruption cases.
Also last week, former top nuclear power official Kang Rixin (康日新), who was sacked in August, was stripped of his party membership and referred by the party to stand trial for abuse of power and corruption, Xinhua reported.
An internal party investigation had found that Kang, former general manager of the China National Nuclear Corp (CNNC), had “abused his authority, enabled profits for others, and taken huge bribes.”
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS