CHINA: A senior Chinese Communist Party member has been sentenced to death for selling official posts in the northern province of Heilongjiang this week, the latest official to be convicted in a growing campaign to stamp out local corruption in China.
In China's largest reported scandal involving the selling of official posts, Ma De, former party secretary of Suihua, was found guilty of taking bribes worth six million yuan (€611,000) over a 10- year period.
In return, he promoted unqualified and corrupt officials to important government jobs. The central government in Beijing is keen to weed out corruption at local level. There have been hundreds of cases of riots and attacks on government offices by farmers and townspeople angry at abuses by local officials. The central government fears the destabilising effect of rural unrest and wants to stop the corruption.
In April this year, in the village of Huaxi in Zhejiang province, I saw the immediate aftermath of a riot where 3,000 police were beaten back by 10,000 villagers, angry at the way their land was given over for the construction of chemical plants by what they said were officials on the take.
The government has also announced a nationwide campaign to ensure public complaints and petitions are better handled.
In a new departure, the corruption trials are being widely publicised, including that of Ma, whose death sentence, which was suspended for two years, was handed down by the Beijing No 2 Intermediate People's Court.
The case involved hundreds of bureaucrats. Over 10 years about 50 people were promoted to top jobs after making payments to Ma.
The former mayor of Suihua, was also sentenced to 15 years in jail for taking bribes. In April this year, a court in Yanbian jailed Cai Haowen, a bureaucrat who embezzled €300,000 and spent it all in a North Korean casino.