WANG WEIGONG, an influential cadre and former personal secretary to a powerful Chinese official, has been sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve, a sign of how deep an anti-corruption purge against Shanghai leaders has gone.
Mr Wang was an assistant to Huang Ju, a former vice-premier and one of the most powerful officials in China, who died in 2007. Mr Huang was a key ally of former president Jiang Zemin, and was a former party boss in Shanghai before rising to be ranked sixth in the Communist Party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee.
The purge in 2006, which started with an investigation into a brash toll-road operator Zhang Rongkun and ended in the detentions of hundreds of officials in Shanghai and the fall of the city’s powerful party secretary, Chen Liangyu, marked a power shift in China and was a blow to the influence of Mr Jiang, who handed over the last of his posts to current president Hu Jintao in 2004.
Mr Chen has been sentenced to 18 years for his role in the scandal.
The inquiry centred on the embezzlement of 3.7 billion yuan (€470 million) of the city’s pension funds for use on road construction and property development.
Officials say all embezzled funds have been recovered. The death sentence with a two-year reprieve, handed down by Changchun Intermediate People’s Court in Jilin province, usually means life in jail.
Mr Wang was convicted of accepting bribes of nearly 13 million yuan (€1.5 million) between 1995 and 2006, most of which came from Mr Zhang, ex-chairman of Fuxi Investment and Feidian Investment, and formerly China’s 16th richest man. Mr Zhang was given 19 years in jail for bribing civil servants.
The focus of the investigation was the way in which Mr Wang brokered the relationship between Mr Chen and Mr Zhang, the court said.
The remainder of the bribes came from seven companies and individuals.
Mr Wang’s company bought a state-owned road construction company in January 2002, and then invited the influential Communist Party chief Mr Chen to dine with Mr Zhang. Mr Zhang then bought a controlling stake in the company for 300 million yuan (€34 million) less than the true value of the shares.
Mr Zhang later funded highway construction projects with money from the social security fund.
