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Communist Vietnam's secret death penalty conveyor belt: How country trails only China and Iran for 'astonishing' number of executions

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Prisoners are dragged from their cells at 4am without warning to be given a lethal injection Vietnam's use of the death penalty has been thrust into the spotlight after a real estate tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to be executed in one of the biggest corruption cases in the country's history. Truong My Lan, a businesswoman who chaired a sprawling company that developed luxury apartments, hotels, offices and shopping malls, was arrested in 2022.

Chinese Telecom Executive Sentenced to Death for Bribery

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SHANGHAI — A former executive at China Mobile, one of this country’s biggest state-owned telecommunications companies, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve Tuesday for accepting bribes, according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency.

The sentence means that with good behavior the executive’s penalty could be commuted to life in prison. Li Hua, the former chairman and general manager of the Sichuan branch of China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile phone operator as measured by subscribers, was convicted of accepting more than $2.5 million in bribes by the Intermediate People’s Court in the city of Panzhihua, in southwest China’s Sichuan Province.

The same type of sentence was handed down last month for one of the company’s other former executives, Zhang Chunjiang, who once served as vice chairman of China Mobile. He was convicted of accepting more than $1.15 million in bribes while working at a series of state-run telecom companies from 1994 to 2009.


Source: The New York Times, August 31, 2011
Location: Shanghai, République populaire de Chine
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