New | Gold, liquor, and houses: new details emerge of disgraced general Gu Junshan's graft loot
Stashes of gold, alcohol took two nights to confiscate, report says, as more light shed on his 2012 downfall
It took 20 paramilitary officers two nights to seize possessions – enough to fill four trucks – from one of the ancestral homes of a disgraced deputy military logistics chief, as new details emerged on Wednesday about the 2012 investigation and the biggest People’s Liberation Army graft case in recent years.
Among the items confiscated from the mansion of Lieutenant General Gu Junshan's family in Puyang, Henan province were a pure gold statue of Mao Zedong, a gold wash basin, a model boat made of gold and crates of mao-tai liquor.
Gu’s two brothers also owned homes next to the family mansion, and the three homes were linked together by a more than 30-metre-long basement stacked with crates of expensive liquor. Most of these remained untouched as Gu had not lived there for many years, according to a Caixin report.
The latest details shed more light on a case that has been largely kept hushed, with no official word on the matter other than a military researcher mentioning in state media last August that there was an investigation against Gu.
Gu, who was in charge of the military’s real estate and infrastructure before being promoted to deputy chief of the General Logistics Department, was taken into custody on January 19, 2012, and placed under investigation for “economic problems”, a euphemism for corruption. The next month, Gu's name was erased from the defence department’s website.