China's biggest graft case leads to death penalty for former official

In a nation of superlatives when it comes to the scale of just about everything, now one former official in North China's Inner Mongolia can add his dubious achievement to the list: a staggering 3 billion yuan ($420 million) in misappropriated funds and accepted bribes, the biggest haul from graft by an individual in the country's history, according to Caixin calculations based on publicly available information.

Li Jianping, who once headed a special economic zone in Hohhot and the city's water management authority, was found guilty of pocketing this massive sum in September 2022 and sentenced to death for corruption, bribery, embezzlement and engaging in organized crime. He filed an appeal and the Inner Mongolia High Court retried the case in August. A new verdict is still pending.

He is just the latest scalp caught in a decade-long anti-corruption dragnet that has ensnared nearly 5 million Communist Party cadres, who have been investigated since the 18th Party Congress in 2012, according to data from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the highest supervisory body, as of April 2022. Of that number 723,000 were found to have breached party regulations and 644,000 received some kind of party sanction.

The pace of the investigation and meting out punishments appears to be increasing, with 405,000 officials sanctioned in the first three quarters of 2023, according to the CCDI.

Li's case highlights how if left unchecked, officials in local governments overseeing massive infrastructure projects like economic and technological development zones, which generated the equivalent of 12% of the nation's total gross domestic product last year, can foster an environment of corruption and pocket billions in illicit gains.

These zones were initially established to implement reform and opening-up policies with the aim of attracting investment and promoting economic development, but instead have become conduits for corruption utilized by some officials, according to Zhuang Deshui, deputy director of Peking University's Center for Anti-Corruption and Governance.

The 63-year-old Li is the third official to be sentenced to death after being found guilty of graft since 2007, when China tightened rules on application of the death penalty. The others were Lai Xiaomin, former chairman of state-owned China Huarong Asset Management, and Zhang Zhongsheng, a former vice mayor of Luliang in Shanxi province.

Lai was put to death in January 2021 for taking what was previously a record 1.79 billion yuan in bribes and other crimes. Zhang meanwhile, was convicted in 2018 for taking 1.04 billion yuan in bribes but was granted a two-year reprieve in the second instance in 2021 after appeal, which was aided when he informed on other officials.

In China, a suspended death sentence is normally reduced to life imprisonment.

Unlike his predecessors, Li was a midlevel local official in China's hierarchical bureaucratic system, with his corrupt behavior and prosecution flying largely under the public's radar. His downfall in late 2018 initially attracted little attention, but as more details were revealed, his case shocked the nation due to the enormous amount of his illicit profits.

Prosecutors accused Li of using his positions -- first as the Communist Party chief and director of Hohhot Water Authority starting in 2001 and as secretary of the party working committee of the Hohhot Economic and Technological Development Zone a decade later -- to pocket 578 million yuan in bribes in exchange for favors related to construction projects and business contracts.

He was also convicted of illegally obtaining 1.44 billion yuan by falsifying property transaction deals in collusion with others and embezzling 1.1 billion yuan in government funds.

He spent most of the money on gambling, purchasing luxury items or squirreling it away overseas, according to court documents.

Altogether, the 3 billion yuan of illicit gains amassed by Li nearly doubled the total bribes taken by Lai. The CCDI, China's top graft buster, coined the case as "the biggest corruption case in Inner Mongolia."

Source: asia.nikkei.com, Staff, December 12, 2023

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