CHINESE NEWSPAPERS were yesterday dominated by photographs of Cheng Kejie, the day after the former National People's Congress Standing Committee vice-chairman became the most senior Communist Party official to be shot for corruption since 1949.
But none mentioned the trials that began on Wednesday in five cities in Fujian province and which are likely to result in the execution of up to 12 senior officials in the biggest smuggling case in China's history, involving goods worth an estimated US$10 billion (about HK$77.9 billion).
The closest any of the mainland media came to mentioning this were brief references to the problem of graft in the province, as well as the first official confirmation that former vice-minister of public security Li Jizhou is under investigation for his involvement in a 'huge corruption case'.
But the mastermind behind the scandal, Lai Changxing, president of the Yuanhua Group, is not in the dock. Tipped off by one of his highly-placed contacts in the police, Lai fled the country before he could be arrested and is believed to be living abroad and to have transferred his earnings to Hong Kong.
On August 21 last year, several hundred armed police sealed off the Yuanhua office and apartment complex in Xiamen and detained 170 staff. They found a mountain of material, including a list of several hundred officials to whom the company had paid bribes. But when they went to the bank to check the accounts, they were empty. The mainland media has published almost nothing about the scandal, so the only details available have been pieced together from leaks to the Hong Kong media and anecdotes from Xiamen people.
It could be a dry run for the end of Communist Party rule: how a man with limited education and no special background can cripple state institutions - the military, police, customs, frontier police, banks, procurate, city government and Communist Party - and earn an illegal fortune in just six years.
