Former discipline inspector gets suspended death sentence

Liu Yanping, a former senior discipline inspector, received a suspended death sentence for taking bribes exceeding 234 million yuan ($34.5 million) on Tuesday.

Liu was the former head of the discipline inspection and supervision team sent by the Communist Party of China Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the National Commission of Supervision, China's top anti-graft watchdogs, to the Ministry of State Security.

The Changchun Intermediate People's Court in Jilin province sentenced Liu to death with a two-year reprieve for bribery, revoked his political rights for life and ordered the confiscation of all his property.

After the reprieve, his sentence will be commuted to life in prison without parole. His ill-gotten gains will be confiscated and handed over to the State treasury.

From 2001 to 2022, Liu took advantage of his positions including as deputy director, political commissar and director of the security guard bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, assistant minister and vice-minister of public security, and the discipline inspector in the Ministry of State Security, to help relevant departments and individuals in running businesses, handling cases, work arrangement and license plate processing.

In return, he received money and properties offered by others, totaling 234 million yuan.

Liu's acts constituted the crime of taking bribes, with a particularly huge quantity and serious circumstances, and the social impact was extremely bad, causing heavy losses to the interests of the State and the people, the court said.

Given that Liu actively confessed his guilt, confessed to crimes that the investigators had not investigated and returned the illegal gains, the court gave him statutory leniency.

His case was publicly heard in November, and he pleaded guilty.

Liu, 67, a native of Hebei province, began working in 1974 and joined the Party in 1979.

Liu was placed under investigation in March last year and was expelled from the Party and removed from his post in September.

The Supreme People's Procuratorate then approved the arrest of Liu and designated the case to the Changchun People's Procuratorate, which filed a lawsuit against him in late September.