Government and Policy
Former political adviser gets death verdict
By Zheng Caixiong (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-24 09:05
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GUANGZHOU - Chen Shaoji, a former top political adviser in South China's Guangdong province, was on Friday sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for accepting bribes.
Chongqing No 1 Intermediate People's Court delivered the verdict after a trial that started on June 25.
Chen, 64, was accused of abusing his former positions, including as provincial police chief and chairman of the Guangdong provincial committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, to benefit others in return for nearly 30 million yuan ($4 million) between 1992 and 2009.
The court ordered all of Chen Shaoji's property to be confiscated.
The bribes he took were "enormous" and his offense is "very serious", said the court, which suspended his death sentence because he confessed his crimes and returned all the money and goods he gained illicitly.
Chen Shaoji was expelled from the Communist Party of China (CPC) and dismissed from office by the CPC's disciplinary watchdog last year.
He was one of the eight ministerial-level officials investigated for corruption last year. Others include former vice-president of the supreme court, Huang Songyou, who was sentenced on Jan 19 to life in prison for bribery and embezzlement, and former vice-president of the State-run China Development Bank, Wang Yi, who was given a suspended death sentence on April 15, also for bribery.
In addition, Xiang Huaizhu, former deputy director of the economic criminal investigation bureau under the Ministry of Public Security, was sentenced to 12 years in jail at Beijing No 2 Intermediate People's Court on Friday.
Xiang, 46, was convicted of accepting more than 2 million yuan in cash and luxury cars during his service. Bribes included more than 1 million yuan from Huang Guangyu, the jailed founder of the GOME electronics chain, who was once China's richest man, according to the news website of the State prosecutors' office.
Huang, 41, gave the bribes in exchange for Xiang's "assistance" in the course of investigations into GOME and a real estate company owned by the magnate between 2006 and 2008. It did not give further details of Xiang's role in the GOME case.
Xiang's wife, Li Shanjuan, who worked in the Ministry of Public Security's auditing department, was also sentenced to 19 months for taking 170,000 yuan in bribes.
Xiang and his wife were detained in July 2009.
Huang was jailed for 14 years for bribery and insider trading in May - a spectacular fell from grace for a high school dropout who built a retail empire.
Huang's wife Du Juan was sentenced to three and a half years and fined 200 million yuan.
Xiang's boss Zheng Shaodong went on trial in Xi'an Intermediate People's Court in Shaanxi province this month on charges of accepting bribes and abusing his authority.
Zheng, former assistant minister of public security and director of its bureau of economic criminal investigation, was suspected to have been involved in Huang Guangyu's case.
Prosecutors alleged Zheng had abused his position by promoting the interests of others in return for bribes worth more than 8.26 million yuan from 2001 to October 2007.
Zheng also sought personal gain by using his authority to help others, by seeking favors for people involved in criminal investigations, as well as in job promotions and employment, prosecutors said.
The court has yet to deliver a verdict on Zheng.
Chen Shaoji, Zheng and Huang are all Guangdong natives, while Xiang and his wife come from East China's Shandong province.
