Lethal injection for 'reprieved' tycoon
Stay of sentence granted last year after he donated billions
The mainland yesterday executed a tycoon implicated in a murder but reportedly granted a stay of execution last year after he offered to donate billions of yuan in oil assets to the state.
According to the Supreme People's Court website, Yuan Baojing was given a lethal injection, along with his brother and a cousin, shortly after the Intermediate People's Court in Liaoyang , Liaoning province , announced a decision to carry out the execution.
The court handed down a death sentence to Yuan in January last year, and an appeal to the Liaoning Higher People's Court was rejected.
He was condemned to death for hiring his brother and two cousins to kill a former police officer who tried to blackmail him in October 2003.
Authorities approved a request by Yuan's wife, Zhuoma , and relatives of his brother, Yuan Baoqi , and his cousin, Yuan Baosen , to meet the trio before the execution, the report said.
Sources said Ms Zhuoma and Yuan's lawyer, Liu Jiazhong - who were not notified by the court in advance of the execution and found out through other means - were shocked at the final court ruling.
The report did not say when the court made the decision to carry out the sentence or referred to Yuan's widely reported donation of his stake in an Indonesian oilfield, worth about 49.5 billion yuan.
It also fell short of giving an explanation of Yuan's last-minute reprieve on October 14, which came after the Liaoning court upheld the lower court's death sentence ruling, according to the Xinhua-owned Oriental Outlook magazine.
Yuan's execution came as a surprise to many, following months of media speculation linking his miraculous escape to the billionaire's reported donation - a contribution confirmed by his wife.
Ms Zhuoma told the South China Morning Post in November that Yuan's donation had been accepted by the central government and was being verified. Ms Zhuoma and Mr Liu insisted that Yuan's stay of execution was due to some important evidence he provided which implicated a senior Liaoning legal cadre in a corruption scandal.
Yuan insisted he had been wronged and forced to confess, while his lawyer alleged the conviction in Yuan's murder case exposed serious flaws in the judicial system, including poor law enforcement and a lack of protection of the lawful rights of the accused.
Yuan's mysterious rags to riches story and subsequent fall from grace has attracted nationwide attention. The 40-year-old Liaoyang native made his fortune with the Beijing-based Jianhao Group in the early 1990s and in 1996 his personal assets were estimated at more than 3 billion yuan, the report said.
In 1996 Yuan paid 160,000 yuan to hire Wang Xing , then a Jianhao company employee and a former Liaoyang police officer, to kill another man Yuan blamed for losing his company 90 million yuan in futures trading.
The assassination attempt failed and Wang began blackmailing Yuan, threatening to reveal his plot if he did not lend him money. Yuan then decided to get rid of Wang and paid his brother, Yuan Baoqi, 300,000 yuan to take care of the murder, the report said.
Wang was shot dead outside his home in October 2003.
