Shaanxi official's corruption case is the tip of iceberg
When Zhang Gaiping was party chief of Shangzhou's Shanglou district, she exerted influence in an area where the monthly wage for an official was less than 600 yuan. But in one of the poorest parts of impoverished Shaanxi province, the 49-year-old was able to amass more than 1 million yuan in five years by peddling her influence among the government employees around her.
Shangzhou officials bribed, borrowed and stole the money needed to pay her to further their careers in a corruption scandal that state media have described as the province's biggest. But Zhang's alleged graft is just one of the many official cash-for-promotions cases across the country in recent years.
Zhang's trial last week at Xian Intermediate Court illustrated the value of power as a commodity. Before being sentenced to 13 years in jail, the court heard she accepted up to 380,000 yuan in one case to help officials advance their careers.
A total of 27 officials and a local property developer paid for her influence between 2000 and last year. The public servants offering the bribes worked in departments from education and finance to transport, agriculture and welfare.
To raise the money for the bribes, the officials embezzled public funds, took bribes from their juniors or borrowed money from banks and friends.
The largest single sum Zhang received was from Chen Xinzhi, then director of Shangzhou's education bureau. Chen paid Zhang 380,000 yuan, including 40,000 yuan from a fund for a hygiene and anti-epidemic centre.
Zhang Bin, former deputy director of transport bureau, in 2003 and 2004 embezzled 30,000 yuan from public accounts so Zhang would endorse his promotion to head of Shangzhou's administration office.
And two family planning officials took out bank loans to cover their bribery expenses.
'It was well-known among Shangzhou officials that to get promoted, you had to pay Zhang Gaiping. If not, you had no chance,' the China Youth Daily quoted an unnamed official as saying.
Zhang was arrested in April after another official, who was sentenced to 10 years' jail for taking bribes from a local gangster, was found to have 'bought' his position from Zhang for 15,000 yuan.
Before being appointed Shangzhou party chief in 2000, Zhang served as the city's mayor between 1999 and 2000, and Qindu district party head between 1997 and 1999.
She did not contest any of the charges against her and admitted to frittering away much of the money on bribing Beijing officials in the interests of her own career. Only three of 27 officials involved in the scandal have been arrested. The rest are still free and face no penalty.
And Zhang's case is not the only recent one of its kind.
Li Jiating, former governor of Yunnan province , was convicted in 2001 of taking more than 18 million yuan in bribes to promote dozens of officials. Last year, Ma De - former party secretary of Suihua , Heilongjiang province - was sentenced to death for taking more than 6 million yuan in bribes for promoting officials to important government posts during his 10 years in various government positions.
The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection announced on Wednesday that four senior officials in Guangxi , Guangdong, Sichuan and Shaanxi had been arrested or sentenced in the first six months of the year for giving and taking bribes. Zhang was the highest-ranking official of the group.
Political analyst Hu Xingdou, from the Beijing Institute of Technology, said a lack of supervision was the main reason Zhang could use her power to appoint people to official positions.
'A lack of supervision of top official leaders is still common in the government's internal structures,' Professor Hu said, adding that local governments often failed to punish corrupt officials efficiently.
'They usually only investigate and sentence the officials taking bribes, but seldom indict those officials offering bribes for their promotions,' he said.
