Former senior legislator sentenced to life for abuse of power

Chen Jiadong, former senior legislator in Xiamen, Fujian province, was given a life sentence by a court in Jiangxi province on Tuesday for multiple corruption-related crimes.

Chen, former director of the standing committee of Xiamen people's congress, the city's top legislature, was sentenced to life imprisonment for bribery, according to a ruling announced by the Nanchang Intermediate People's Court.

At the same time, he was sentenced to seven years in prison and fined 300,000 yuan ($41,079) for embezzlement, and received an eight-year imprisonment for abuse of power, the court said.

It declared that it decided to give Chen the life sentence after combining the punishments. It also stripped Chen of his political rights for life and ordered that all his personal assets be confiscated.

His illicit gains, along with interest earned, have been turned over to the national treasury, it added.

It was revealed that from 2000 to 2022, Chen took advantage of his various work positions, including mayor of Ningde, Fujian, and Party chief of Zhangzhou, Fujian, and the director of the standing committee of Xiamen people's congress, to provide aids for individuals and departments in matters such as approving the right to use forest and project contracting. In return, he received money and some other assets worth more than 94.15 million yuan ($12.8 million).

From 2013 to 2014, when he was serving as Party chief of Zhangzhou, he abused his power for personal gains and overpaid property developers for projects, resulting in financial losses of more than 190 million yuan of State-owner property.

In addition, he was also found to have jointly embezzled over 3.41 million yuan of State-owned assets with others while still Zhangzhou's Party chief from 2015 to 2017.

"Chen should be severely punished as the amount of his bribes and embezzlement was extremely large and his abuse of power was also extremely serious," the court said.

"Considering he has not yet obtained some of his bribes and voluntarily confessed to some offenses that investigators had not known during interrogation, we leniently punished him."

Chen, 64, a native of Fujian, started his first job in 1981 and joined the Communist Party of China in 1986.

He spent almost all his career in the province, except for one stint in Nyingchi of the Tibet autonomous region from July 2001 to July 2004.

In February 2022, he was placed under investigation for suspected severe violations of the Party disciplines and laws.

About six months later, he was expelled from the Party and dismissed from the work post.

On June 29, the court in Jiangxi publicly heard his case.