Li Wenxi receives suspended death sentence

Li Wenxi, former vice chairman of the Liaoning Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, received a suspended death sentence on Friday for taking bribes exceeding 540 million yuan.

The Tai'an Intermediate People's Court in Shandong province sentenced Li 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. The ill-gotten gains will be confiscated and handed over to the State treasury.

From 2004 to 2012, Li capitalized on his positions, including head of the Liaoning provincial public security department, vice-chairman of the CPPCC Liaoning Provincial Committee, and the vice chairman of the Police Association of China, to help others in case handling and businesses operation.

From 2006 to 2021, Li received money and valuables from others, with a total value of about 540 million yuan.

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

Given that Li confessed his guilt, actively confess the facts of bribery that the investigators had not obtained, returned the illegal gains and revealed the suspected violations of other senior officials, the court gave him statutory leniency.

Li, 72, a native of Liaoning, began working in 1969 and joined the Communist Party of China in 1972. He became the head of the Liaoning provincial public security department in May 2002, and the vice-chairman of the CPPCC Liaoning Provincial Committee in January 2008.

He was placed under disciplinary review and supervisory investigation in January 2021 and was expelled from the Party in July 2021. The Supreme People's Procuratorate approved the arrest of him in August.

The Tai'an People's Procuratorate initiated a lawsuit against him in September 2021, and the Tai'an Intermediate People's Court publicly heard the case in July 2022.