Top Chinese official gets life for $6m bribery

Langfang, China:

A former top Chinese economic planning official was convicted of bribery yesterday and sentenced to life in prison after a former lover went public with a litany of accusations against him.

The guilty verdict against Liu Tienan, once deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic planning agency, is the latest step of the Communist Party’s much-publicised anti-corruption campaign.

“Liu Tienan is sentenced to life in prison for bribery,” the Langfang Intermediate People’s Court said in a document handed to AFP.

He was convicted of taking $5.8 million in bribes, the document added.

It added that the case was “based on clear facts and concrete and sufficient evidence”.

Beijing authorities picked the court in Langfang, a desolate and bleak industrial city in Hebei province, an hour’s drive south of the capital, to hear the case.

State broadcaster China Central Television showed Liu facing the judge impassively in court as the verdict was read out. He wore a black jacket and trousers, and was flanked by two policemen.

Foreign media were not allowed in and there was a large police presence outside, where the road was blocked off and a parade of police vehicles drove up and down the street, while a group of protesters complained about local government wrongdoing.

Liu took bribes from various business people included cash and gifts for his son, among them a villa in Beijing and a Porsche, in exchange for project approvals and other favours, the court said during his trial in September.

He had accepted his guilt, it said then on a verified microblog account, quoting him tearfully expressing “deep repentance and remorse”.

“Every round of interrogation, every sentence and even every contact with the investigators has felt like whips slashing my soul,” he said.

“Faced with the facts, I have been asking myself every time I read the indictment, is this me? How did I end up being corrupted like this?”

Source: Daily Monitor Uganda: