Chen Rugui sentenced to life imprisonment for bribery

Chen Rugui, former vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the Guangdong Provincial People's Congress, was sentenced to life in jail for taking bribes valued at more than 108 million yuan ($15 million).

The Nanning Intermediate People's Court in the capital city of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region also announced the confiscation of all the personal properties Chen illegally gained in accordance with the law in the first-instance trial organized on Tuesday.

All of Chen's bribe money and interests were handed over to the national treasury, according to the court verdict.

Chen was investigated and found to have taken advantage of his various posts, either directly or through others, to illegally siphon the large sum of bribes via providing assistance to relevant units and individuals in engineering contracting, project promotion, and enterprise operations between 2003 and 2022, according to the verdict.

Chen, born in September 1962 in Guangdong Province, was deputy Party secretary and mayor of Shenzhen in 2017. He was promoted to be the vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the Guangdong Provincial People's Congress in April 2021.

He was once deputy Party secretary and executive vice mayor of Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province, and later Party secretary of Zhongshan city before he took office in the Shenzhen special economic zone bordering the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

In Guangzhou, Chen was once secretary general of the government and director of the city's bureau of housing and rural-urban development.

Chen was detained and put under investigation in June 2022, and he was later dismissed from public office and expelled from the Party.

The court verdict said the defendant should be severely punished according to law, as Chen's behavior has constituted the crime of bribery and he had received a particularly large amount of bribes.

Meanwhile, Chen pleaded guilty and repented; he also actively returned the bribe money, the report said.