Law catches up with Lanzhou official for taking bribes and squandering company assets on get-rich schemes

A director of one of the biggest factories in the west of China has been sentenced to death for taking bribes worth one million yuan (about HK$936,400) and losing assets equal to a third of the plant's worth.

The Southern Weekend magazine recounted the rise and fall of Wei Guangqian, 53, for 11 years a director of the Liancheng Aluminium Plant, in Lanzhou, capital of Gansu province, that employs 4,000 workers.

It vividly illustrates the corruption and abuse of power common in the state sector, the lack of external supervision and neglect of employees' interests.

An intermediate court in Lanzhou sentenced Wei to death on May 11 and the high court of Gansu upheld the verdict in August.

It is now in front of the Supreme People's Court. In Wei's office, his house and that of family members, investigators found 2.04 million yuan cash, 66 pieces of gold jewellery, cameras and VCRs. He received 979,020 yuan in bribes and 391,000 yuan whose source could not be explained.

His life of crime began in the early 1990s when officials from a real estate company in Guangdong persuaded him to speculate in land for which they used a bank loan of 40 million yuan raised in the name of a project for his Lanzhou factory. Wei and an associate bought two plots totalling 13 hectares for which they received kickbacks of 4.95 million yuan. Both pieces of land were never developed and yielded no return.

Wei's next scheme was more ambitious. A 25-year-old Guangdong businessman, named Pan, proposed a joint venture. Wei would use the land in Guangdong as capital and hold a 65 per cent share in the Nanhai venture to make aluminium products - financed by capital from the Lanzhou plant. Pan, to persuade Wei, set up a company in Shenzhen that employed Wei's children to trade futures and invited him and his family twice to Macau for gambling and entertainment. Pan spent 100,000 yuan on each occasion.