Former vice-governor of Shanxi province sentenced to 14 years in prison

Liu Xinyun, former vice-governor of Shanxi province, was sentenced to 14 years in prison after a court in Hebei province combined punishments of his corruption-related convictions on Wednesday.

The Intermediate People's Court in Langfang, Hebei, sentenced Liu to 12 years in prison for the crime of bribery, with a fine of 1 million yuan ($141,800), and also gave him another four-year imprisonment for power abuse. In total, he was sentenced to a prison term of 14 years.

Liu's illicit gains from bribery, as well as the interest it generated, were recovered and turned over to the state treasury, according to the court.

From 1998 to last year, Liu took advantage of the work positions he served as, including vice-mayor of Heze, a city of Shandong province, head of public security bureau in Jinan, capital of Shandong, and head of the Ministry of Public Security's cybersecurity protection bureau, to provide aid for some individuals and departments in their enterprise operation, enrollment of their children and case handling, the court said.

In return, Liu accepted bribes of more than 13.33 million yuan, it added.

Between March 2018 and April last year, when Liu served as vice-governor of Shanxi and head of the provincial public security bureau, he breached the law and the discipline, and also violated the rule of information technology development, abusing his power in the construction of an online management platform for local police's law enforcement. His behaviour resulted in major losses of public property and interests of the nation and the people, it said.

What Lin did has constituted the crimes of bribery and power abuse, "and he should be heavily punished, because the sum of his bribes were 'extremely large' and he abused his power to control other people's promotions and job transfers several times," the court said.

Considering he pleaded guilty and voluntarily confessed to some bribes that the investigators had not known, with recovery of all illicit profits, "we leniently penalized him," it added.

Liu, 60, a native of Zibo, Shandong, started his career in July 1981. He joined the Communist Party of China in May 1984.

He served in Shandong for over 30 years before he was dispatched to work in the Ministry of Public Security in 2014, and he began his service in Shanxi four years later.

He was placed under investigation for serious violations of the law and discipline in April last year, four months later, he was expelled from the Party and removed from office. Soon, he was prosecuted for the crimes of bribery and abuse of power.

In January, the court publicly heard the case.

Also on Wednesday, Gong Dao'an, former deputy mayor and police chief of Shanghai, was sentenced to life in prison for taking bribes.

In a documentary on China's anti-corruption efforts that aired early this year, the country's top anti-graft watchdog revealed details of Sun Lijun, former vice-minister of public security, and how he cultivated his followers to form a small political group and take a huge amount of bribes.

Under Sun's help, Gong became head of the Public Security Bureau of Shanghai, and Liu was named as head of the ministry's cybersecurity bureau.