Corrupt officials confess in TV show

By Li Qian (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2007-08-07 17:19

Government officials and corporation managers involved in the recent Shanghai social security fund scandal will soon stand trial, and some of the officials, under permission by related departments, will be interviewed in a TV documentary disclosing their wayward ways.

The Central Disciplinary Commission has approved requests by its Shanghai branch that it would shoot a fact-revealing program of 11 corrupt officials to show how they became corrupt, Yangcheng Evening News reported.

The introspective documentary, to be named "The Ruin of Greedy Desire", will be broadcast after shooting is finished, and the disciplinary agency wants it to function as a warning to all local Communist cadres above a certain ranking and admonish them not to follow the same road as former Shanghai mayor Chen Liangyu.

Qin Yu, former governor of Shanghai's Baoshan District and previously Chen's secretary who was charged for embezzling seven million yuan, confessed before TV cameras that he felt the huge discrepancy in his income and those of business moguls was unfair and that was what drove him to corruption.

Another principal criminal in the fund case besides Chen, Zhu Junyi, said he took money illegally because he thought it was the right time to make extra money after he became head of the Shanghai Labor Bureau. He allegedly pocketed more than 10 million yuan in total.

China is stepping up efforts to exterminate corruption in government and the party. Caijing Magazine reported the trials for most of the prosecuted officials will soon begin in Shanghai, and Jilin and Anhui provinces separately.



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