The Hongcouver | Pop star Wanting Qu issues update on mother’s death-penalty case, declaring Chinese law ‘perfect and righteous’
The former girlfriend of Vancouver’s mayor says she is ‘waiting in silence’ for the long-delayed verdict in her mother’s US$55million Harbin City corruption case
Wanting Qu, the Vancouver-based Chinese pop star and former girlfriend of the Canadian city’s married mayor, has issued an update on her mother’s long-delayed death-penalty case, saying she is “waiting in silence” because she believes Chinese law to be “perfect and righteous”.
Qu Zhang Mingjie, a former planning official in Harbin city, Heilongjiang, was arrested in 2014 and tried in July 2016 on charges of corruption, accused of embezzling about 350 million yuan (US$55 million) in a real estate scam which saw a state-owned corn farm transferred to a private firm for redevelopment in 2009. Chinese media said the deal left hundreds of workers, already living on the farm, in dire conditions, denied millions of yuan in compensation and with the heat to their dorms shut off in sub-zero conditions.
Zhang vigorously denied the charges, and said her confession was extracted illegally. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
In a statement issued on her Weibo page on Wednesday, Wanting Qu said no judgment had been issued since the trial, conducted over just two days by the Harbin City Intermediate People's Court.