Big fish caught in China’s anti-graft net
Published on: Wednesday, January 19, 2022
By: AFP
.jpg "Big fish caught in China’s anti-graft net")
BEIJING: A state TV set collection documenting higher-profile officers caught in President Xi Jinping’s (pic) purge of the Communist Party’s upper echelons has captivated thousands and thousands in China and renewed concentration on common abuses of electrical power.The former head of Interpol, an ex-spy main and a Xinjiang governor accused of “trading electric power for sex” are just some of the cadres to undergo stunning falls from grace.
ADVERTISEMENT
Ostensibly a crackdown on corruption, critics say the huge-ranging campaign has also served to eliminate those voicing criticism of the all-impressive leader.
Ex-deputy community safety minister Sunlight Lijun oversaw stability in Hong Kong in the course of months of unrest in 2019.
He was sacked and expelled from the Communist Party for allegedly using bribes, manipulating the inventory market place, illegally possessing firearms and shelling out for sex, and billed this thirty day period.
This week’s Television set programme highlighted a “confession” by Sunshine in which he admitted to obtaining a series of bribes well worth $14 million, hidden inside of containers of what appeared to be seafood.
ADVERTISEMENT
The previous chairman of Huarong — a single of China’s greatest point out-managed asset management companies — Lai Xiaomin was executed in January 2021 for receiving “extremely large” bribes.
A courtroom in the metropolis of Tianjin dominated that the previous Communist Get together member experienced applied his situation to obtain US$260 million in bribes.
ADVERTISEMENT
It also discovered him guilty of embezzlement and bigamy, less than a month just before his execution.
Son of a large-rating revolutionary standard and a political higher-flyer tipped for China’s potential leadership, Bo Xilai was sentenced to lifetime in jail for bribery in 2013, amid a murder scandal involving his wife and the loss of life of a British businessman.
Charismatic Bo, 72, experienced uncovered deep splits in the party prior to Xi took energy in 2012.
He was party chief of the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing when murder allegations in opposition to his spouse Gu Kailai burst into the open up.
Bo was stripped of his place and convicted of bribery, embezzlement and abuse of ability, and his wife was handed a dying sentence for murder — afterwards commuted to everyday living imprisonment.
Interpol chief Meng Hongwei was sentenced to more than 13 years in prison for bribery in a case that shook the international police organisation.
Previous spy main Zhou Yongkang was convicted of a series of corruption prices — including bribery, abuse of power and leaking state secrets — and jailed for daily life in 2015.
Till his tumble from grace, Zhou, 79 — who started off off as an oil subject technician — was a person of the 9 most senior politicians in China.
China’s previous major cop Fu Zhenghua — who is considered to have led the corruption investigation into Zhou — was later on swept up in the corruption push and investigated for graft.
Then-Interpol main Meng Hongwei was sentenced to additional than 13 several years in prison for bribery in January 2020, in a circumstance that shook the intercontinental police organisation.
He vanished all through a 2018 pay a visit to China from France, where by he was primarily based as the body’s initially Chinese president, and later on pleaded responsible to accepting $2.1 million in bribes.
In the course of his tenure as deputy main of China’s community safety bureau, the agency arrested and interrogated a quantity of prominent Chinese dissidents — like Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, who afterwards died of cancer whilst in police custody.
Information agency Xinhua reported in December that authorities are now preparing a corruption situation in opposition to Meng’s spouse, Grace Meng.
Assets tycoon Ren Zhiqiang was presented 18 several years in 2020 for corruption and embezzlement, following he penned an essay that lambasted Xi’s reaction to the coronavirus pandemic.
The son of a previous commerce minister, Ren was known for his outspokenness, which gained him the nickname “Huge Cannon”. In his essay criticising Xi, he referred to as the president a “clown”.
Just one of China’s optimum-position Uyghur officers and the previous head of the troubled northwestern Xinjiang location, Nur Bekri was jailed for life in 2019.
He pleaded responsible to accepting 79 million yuan ($11.6 million) in bribes around the program of two many years and “trading energy for sexual intercourse”, according to a Chinese court.
Bekri’s tenure in Xinjiang was marred by violence, which include bloody anti-Chinese riots in 2009 that left practically 200 useless.
Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
Daily Express Malaysia
