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China news tagged with: anti-corruption (66)

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Officials in Xinjiang Partially Declare Their Incomes

From Caijing online:

Altay city in Xinjiang made public the income statements of 55 officials on January 1. There is still a long way to go toward true transparency, however.

The only documents made available to the public were salary slips showing that each of these 55 officials earns from 20,000 to 40,000 yuan per year. On paper none of them, nor any of their relatives, admitted accepting cash, gifts or securities from job-related organizations or individuals.

In addition, many more declarations were labeled classified, including money inherited, received as gifts or won in a lottery, and personal property worth more than 100,000 yuan.

Party disciplinary officials in Altay noted several reasons behind the partial declaration — to protect legal property of officials, their safety, and their privacy.
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- January 6, 2009 1:31 AM
Ex-Beijing Official Gets Death Sentence, Reprieve

From AP:

A former Beijing vice mayor in charge of overseeing Olympic construction projects has been given a death sentence for corruption, a court clerk and his lawyer said Sunday.

The Intermediate People’s Court in Hengshui, a city outside Beijing, ordered the death sentence Saturday after finding Liu Zhihua guilty of taking bribes, said a court clerk who would only give his surname, Ma.

However, the sentence was “suspended” for two years, Ma said. The reprieve means if Liu shows good behavior his sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment.

Read also Former Beijing vice mayor given suspended death penalty for bribery by Xinhua.
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- October 18, 2008 11:05 PM
Former Beijing Vice Mayor Goes On Trial

From AP:

A former Beijing vice mayor in charge of overseeing Olympic construction projects has gone on trial for corruption, a court clerk said yesterday.

The trial of Liu Zhihua (劉志華) began on Tuesday at the Intermediate Court in the city of Hengshui outside Beijing, a clerk surnamed Wang said by telephone.

The clerk declined to give any details, saying he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Liu had been dismissed from his post in 2006, kicked out of the Chinese Communist Party, and handed over to prosecutors to face bribery charges.

Read also Trail for Beijing’s Former Vice Major by Luo Changping.
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- October 15, 2008 8:02 PM
Internet Posts Used in Zhuzhou Graft Trial

From Caijing Magazine:

Citizen postings on the Internet may have brought down an official once praised as a “national labor model” in the city of Zhuzhou, Hunan Province.

Data from Web postings led diciplinary officials to launch an investigation into the actions of He Zhi, a former chief and Communist Party secretary of the Zhuzhou Food Bureau.

At an October 6 hearing of the Zhuzhou district court, He was charged with bribery, embezzlement and illegal activity that caused the loss of national assets. The total cost of all these crimes is extimated to be around 30 million yuan.

In his defense, He told the court that his work involved the reform and restructuring of the food supervision system to spur the sector’s development.
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- October 12, 2008 9:22 PM
Kiss-and-Tell Stories Expose Chinese Corruption

The Guardian reports on the creative ways investigators are getting juicy details in corruption cases:

Pillow talk which is passed on in interviews is offering crucial details of illicit dealings, according to the deputy director of the anti-corruption bureau in Dongguan, a major industrial city in the south.

“At least 80% of corrupt officials exposed in Dongguan had mistresses who gave us important information that we did not possess,” Zhou Yuefeng told the China Daily newspaper.

Beijing has repeatedly pledged to prioritise fighting corruption, one of the major causes of public resentment and potential unrest. Earlier this week it said that the situation was “grim” and the task “arduous” as it announced a five-year plan to tackle the problem.

Read also a China Daily report.
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- June 28, 2008 8:25 AM
China Warns Over Quake Corruption

From BBC News:

Chinese regulators have warned that any corrupt practices linked to relief supplies for the Sichuan earthquake will be severely punished.

Officials are working to get tents and supplies to the five million people made homeless by the 12 May quake. The official death toll is now more than 41,000, and another 32,000 people are still missing. There was some good news on Wednesday when a woman was reportedly rescued from a tunnel of a hydropower plant.
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- May 21, 2008 8:58 AM
Sunshine Law and the Case of Chen Liangyu

From Caijing Magazine:

On April 4, the gavel came down for the sentencing of Chen Liangyu. This former member of the Politburo and one-time Shanghai party secretary will spend 18 years in prison after being found guilty of taking bribes and abusing his official powers. Since last June, we have seen a series of connected court cases concerning economic crimes committed in relation to the Shanghai pension scandal come to trial in Shanghai, Tianjin, Anhui and Jilin (see our cover stories Judgment in the Shanghai Pension Scandal Case, Shattered Halo for a Shanghai Magnate, and The Trial of Chen Liangyu). Now, we have an opportunity to take time to reflect and put the matter in perspective.

There is much to reflect on. While many things remain to be done, two must be given priority: The drafting, promulgation and resolute implementation of a “sunshine law;” and issuance of a system of rules governing the behavior of the family and close colleagues of leading officials. This is a fundamental step for the successful implementation of a strategy for fighting and preventing corruption, and for the rebuilding of public confidence.
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- April 23, 2008 2:59 AM
Untangling A Web of Corruption in China

From Los Angeles Times :

One cellphone rings and one cellphone is silent, and the difference is life and death.Chen Xintao didn’t want any interruptions while he was playing poker with his buddies, so the entrepreneur did something rare in this connection-obsessed country: He turned off his phone.

Across town, Bian Lizhong was out celebrating the birth of his daughter. All through dinner, his phone rang. After the fourth call from a business associate insisting that he had to see him right away, Bian finally agreed to meet him. By morning, the new father was dead, his body riddled with 47 bullets.

The entrepreneur was lucky — the killers weren’t able to reach him, so he survived. But they weren’t done with Chen: They framed him for the slaying. For Chen, that night in the winter of 2001 turned out to be the beginning of a six-year struggle to untangle a web of corruption, a world where businessmen use police officers as hired guns and crooked authorities have the power to send innocent men to prison. “I just have to pierce through these lies,” Chen said. “If I don’t, it would be a disappointment for me as a person and a tragedy for China as a country.”
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- March 14, 2008 10:51 AM
China Says Senior Communist Gets Life Sentence For Graft

From AFP:

The former number two of the Communist Party in one of China’s most populous provinces has been sentenced to life in jail for massive graft, state media reported Wednesday.

Du Shicheng, previously the party deputy secretary in east China’s Shandong province, home to 93 million people, was sentenced Tuesday, the Xinhua news agency said.

Du, 57, was found guilty of taking 6.3 million yuan (875,000 dollars) in bribes in the period from 2000 to 2006, according to Xinhua.
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- February 6, 2008 5:10 AM
Chinese Business Leader ‘Corrupt’ - BBC News

From BBC News:
The Chinese authorities say they have launched a corruption investigation against the former head of the oil company Sinopec . Chen Tonghai resigned last June, officially for personal reasons. But state television now reports that Mr Chen took what it described as huge bribes, and abused his position to benefit his mistress. Chinese President Hu Jintao has made tackling rampant corruption one of his top priorities.
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- January 26, 2008 11:34 AM
Chinese Official Fired From Post - AP

From AP via rrstar.com:

A Chinese official who put on an elaborate funeral for his mother that included erecting a massive stage and hiring a 20-piece band has been fired from his Communist Party post and demoted, a state-run newspaper report Tuesday. The China Daily said that Xie Pingfa, a highway administration director in Lufeng, Guangdong province , was removed from his Communist Party post and was demoted for violating party rules on self-discipline and integrity.

Xie had arranged a funeral with his siblings that included setting up a stage more than 65 feet high to allow people in their hometown to pay tributes to his mother and a banquet with more than 100 tables. More than 1,000 people, including eight other officials from the highway administration, attended, the newspaper said. [Full Text]

See CDT’s translation of the original Southern Metropolis News report about the funeral preparations.

[Image: Three thousand residents attended the funeral of Xie Pingfa's mother, from Southern Metropolis News.]
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- January 9, 2008 8:54 AM
Anti-graft Comic Book For Chinese Cadres - AFP

From AFP:

China’s ruling Communist Party will release an anti-graft comic book during the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday to help officials avoid corruption, state press said Tuesday.

The pocket-size comic book, which includes caricatures depicting common forms of graft and bribery, will be distributed as a gift to 100,000 party members in the central province of Henan, Xinhua news agency said.

The books also contain “anti-corruption policies, maxims and aphorisms about clean government,” it added. [Full Text]
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- January 9, 2008 3:44 AM
China Lists New Anti-graft Rules - BBC News

From BBC News:

China has published a list of stringent anti-corruption rules for public officials ahead of a reshuffle of provincial posts later this month. Called the “10 taboos”, the list bans bribery, lobbying for promotion and using dirty tricks to harm rivals.

Providing or accepting souvenirs or hospitality linked to employment were also out, Xinhua news agency reported. Corruption is widespread in China, with access to prized employment and education often dependent on bribes. [Full Text]

[Image: Mr Hu has warned that corruption threatens the party's survival, from AP.]
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- January 4, 2008 10:12 AM
China Lists ‘Taboos’ Ahead of Reshuffle - AP

From the Associated Press:

China’s ruling Communist Party has warned officials against bribery, spreading hearsay and several other taboos, ahead of the reassignment this month of several provincial-level politicians to new posts, a government news agency said.

The no-nos were on a list of “10 taboos” released by the party’s central committee and discipline commission, Xinhua News Agency said late Thursday.

The taboos included lobbying officials of higher rank, handing out pamphlets or souvenirs without authorization, holding social activities to form cliques, and offering or taking bribes.[Full Text]
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- January 3, 2008 11:19 PM
Chinese Anti-corruption Website Crashes from ‘Too Many Hits’ - Reuters

From Reuters via ABCNews:

A Chinese Government website encouraging citizens to report corruption has crashed on its first day under the weight of too many hits.

China’s National Bureau of Corruption Prevention was formed in September after a string of high-profile scandals involving Government officials. By the afternoon, the website could not be opened, the Beijing Youth Daily said. It quoted an official as saying that the “number of visitors was too large”. [Full Text]
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- December 19, 2007 10:33 AM