AQSIQ senior official's death 'accidental', agency says

By Zhu Zhe (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-08-30 08:57

Mystery continues to surround the death of Wu Jianping, a senior figure within the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ), despite the agency making its first official statement about the case on Friday.

"Wu's death was an accident," Yan Fengmin, deputy director of AQSIQ's law enforcement and inspection department told a press briefing in Beijing, without elaborating.

"He was helping prosecutors investigate a corruption case involving another agency, but no charges had been filed against him," he said.

"Media reports claiming large sums of cash were confiscated from Wu's office and home were purely made-up," Yan said.

Media had earlier reported that the 42-year-old head of AQSIQ's food production supervision, died after jumping from a building on Aug 2, a day after being questioned by prosecutors about his finances.

The reports claimed 3 million yuan ($440,000) had been found at Wu's office and 5 million yuan at his home.

While Yan provided no details of Wu's fatal "accident", AQSIQ's press office had earlier said that he died after falling from a building.

At the briefing, AQSIQ was keen to distance Wu's death from the controversial new product identification and tracking system promoted by the agency.

The system, which allocates unique codes to products, has faced criticism recently from several manufacturers, including Nestle and Coca-Cola, for raising production costs.

Controversy was also stirred by a Beijing News report this week claiming that AQSIQ's shareholding in China Credit Information and Technology Co Ltd, the firm that developed the system, would be worth up to 60 billion yuan a year.

Users of the system have to pay an annual service fee of 600 yuan to China Credit.

Pu Changcheng, deputy director of AQSIQ, said at the briefing: "We couldn't believe our eyes when we saw the report.

"We promoted the system because it's an effective way to ensure product quality. We haven't collected a single penny from it."

Yan admitted that a subordinate information center of the AQSIQ had been a shareholder, but claimed all ties had since been severed.

"Once the system began operating, the center withdrew from the company," he said.

Yan said the AQSIQ had, however, realized the system still had technical difficulties and that it would extend the grace period for adoption of the system by manufacturers.