The corruption trial of a former senior Chinese official allied with the country’s once powerful, but disgraced security chief Zhou Yongkang (周永康) began yesterday, state media said, the latest case in an ongoing anti-graft campaign. Two other Zhou allies were sentenced to prison.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has warned that rampant corruption threatens the survival of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and has waged a war on graft in the past three years that has felled scores of senior officials in the party, the government, the military and state-owned companies.
A court in Tianjin opened the trial of former Hainan Province vice governor Ji Wenlin (冀文林), Xinhua news agency said.
Ji, whose criminal probe began as early as last year, illicitly received more than 20.4 million yuan (US$3.2 million) in assets and bribes between 2002 and 2013, Xinhua said.
“Prosecutors presented relevant evidence, the defendant Ji Wenlin and his defenders examined the evidence, and both sides fully issued opinions,” the news agency said.
Ji was an associate of Zhou, 72, the most senior Chinese official to be ensnared in a graft scandal since the CCP swept to power in 1949. Zhou was jailed for life in June.
According to his official biography, Ji had worked under Zhou when the latter was the party boss of Sichuan Province and the public security minister, among other posts.
Courts in Hubei Province on Monday sentenced two other key Zhou allies, Jiang Jiemin (蔣潔敏) and Li Chuncheng (李春城) to 16 and 13 years respectively for bribery and abuse of power.
Jiang, the former party official who once ran China’s largest oil and gas company, was sentenced to 16 years after confessing to taking bribes, a court in central China announced. Another court sentenced Li, a former top party official in Sichuan Province, to 13 years for the same offense. Both men were fined 1 million yuan.
Both men acted under Zhou’s orders to illegally give assistance to other people, causing the state to lose US$235.6 million, according to the court judgment on Zhou issued in June.
Li was dismissed from his post within weeks of Xi’s assumption of power in late 2012, and Jiang was placed under investigation in September 2013. Jiang spent most of his career at China National Petroleum Corp, which Zhou headed from 1996 to 1998. Li served under Zhou in Sichuan Province, where Zhou was the top official from 1999 to 2002.
Jiang took bribes amounting to more than US$2.2 million, and Li took bribes amounting to almost US$6.3 million, according to the verdicts.
Li’s sentence was reduced for “meritorious service,” showing contrition, turning himself in and actively handing over the bribe money, the court said.
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