From The China Blog – Time:
Over the weekend, Xinhua reported the latest in the Shanghai corruption scandal which was responsible for the dismissal of the city’s Communist Party Secretary Chen Liangyu. Chen was removed from his post last September and put under “joint regulations,” a special kind of extra-judicial disciplinary regime reserved for high-ranking members of the Communist Party, for (ostensibly at least) his involvement in embezzling of hundreds of millions of dollars of the city’s pension fund. Since then other officials have been arrested or removed from their posts (again, ostensibly) for their participation in the same affair. The whole probe has been a murky business which may be motivated mostly by political rivalry in the leadership.
Anyway, Sunday Xinhua ran a story in which Shanghai’s mayor (and acting Party Secretary) Han Zheng cheerfully reports that “the city has retrieved every cent that was siphoned off the Shanghai social security fund for illicit loans and investments last year.” For those of you keeping track, that’s 407.6 million dollars. [Full Text]
