SHANGHAI (Reuters) – A former party official in Guangdong province was sentenced to life in prison yesterday for taking bribes and holding property valued far in excess of his legitimate earnings, official media reported.
Wu Zhaohui, former Communist Party deputy general secretary in the export hub of Dongguan city, was convicted of accepting bribes worth 49.7 million yuan ($8.16 million) and holding a “huge amount of unaccountable property,” the Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court said, according to the official Xinhua news service.
The court found that Wu, then deputy chief of Dongguan’s environmental protection bureau, helped a businessman, Lao Hongzhang, win a bid for an industrial waste disposal project in 2003 and again in 2006, when he was chief of the bureau.
President Xi Jinping has said corruption threatens the party’s survival and has vowed to go after high-flying “tigers” as well as lowly “flies” – though so far most anti-corruption targets have been low-ranking.
Landmark reforms announced following a key Party meeting last week included a pledge to step up anti-corruption efforts.
The new measures, part of a package of social and economic reforms, seek to introduce more central Party oversight of corruption and will require Communist cadres to report cases to senior party officials. ($1 = 6.0929 Chinese yuan)
