appConfigEntityId

bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

isVideo

articlePageQuery

article

articleSchemaContent

content

hooksArticlePageAdvertisementConfigArticle

appConfig

filter

json

liveArticle

SCMP Reporter

Former fund chief gets 18 years in prison
The mainland's biggest corruption case in more than a decade moved a step closer to  its conclusion yesterday,  with six men sentenced  in a multibillion-yuan Shanghai pension fund case - just weeks before the 17th Communist Party Congress opens.
Changchun  No1 Intermediate People's Court  sentenced Zhu Junyi  , former director of Shanghai Labour and Social Security Bureau, to 18 years in prison for bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power, the financial magazine Caijing reported on its website.
One of Zhu's deputies, Lu Qiwei ,  received eight years for taking 1 million yuan in bribes.
Shanghai's former Communist Party secretary, Chen Liangyu , was the biggest name implicated in the case.
Zhu was expelled from the party in March  for being 'morally degenerated and leading a decadent lifestyle'.  Another partner in crime was tycoon Zhang Rongkun , who has yet to be tried.
Zhu, 56, had headed the social security bureau since 1996, managing 30 billion yuan of the city's pension fund until he was put under investigation in July last year.
According to Caijing, Zhu loaned Zhang as much as 3 billion yuan from the security fund and  Zhu's wife, Huang Hua , was later put on the payroll of one of Zhang's firms.
In three years, Zhang paid Huang about 1.2 million yuan  in 'salaries'.
Zhu was also accused of abusing his power  to make risky investments, including several unprofitable real estate  deals.
He turned the fund into a private bank for developers who were willing to bribe him and had the right connections. From 2004 to 2006, the fund loaned out more than 7 billion yuan to  developers and companies.
Zhang  was not the only one  with access to the fund. Wang Zheng , former deputy general manager of China Huawen Investment Holding,  got his hands on  as much as 800 million yuan  in 2005  to fund the purchase of a stake in a state-owned property firm, New Huangpu Group.
In the process, Wang paid 10 million yuan in bribes to Wu Minglie ,  president of New Huangpu.
Wang has been sentenced to three years in jail and Wu, who was tried as a state employee, received a life sentence.
Two former directors of the state-owned Shanghai Electric Group were also sentenced, but for different reasons. Han Guozhang  was jailed for life for accepting 6 million yuan in bribes. His partner, Li Songjiang , was given a three-year sentence for bribing other people.
Shanghai Electric also benefited  from the social security fund, and Zhang was an non-executive director of  the group.
The sentencing in Changchun  -  the trial was held in the northeastern  city instead of  Shanghai to avoid interference - might signal that top party leaders want to close Chen's case before the  party congress  in the middle of next month.
Ren Jianming ,  deputy director of Tsinghua University's Clean Governance Centre, said there was a good chance that the case would be closed before the congress opened to underscore the party leadership's determination to curb corruption within  its ranks.
'Past experience showed that lenient punishment for corrupt party officials is losing the  deterrent effect among other officials,' Mr Ren said. 'The public will want to know what punishment senior party officials will face when they are found guilty of committing serious crimes.
'The party needs to close these cases to show that it means business in fighting corruption.'
But Pu Xingzu,  political science professor at Fudan University,  said the sentencing would make no big difference as far as the party congress was concerned because the battle had already been won by President Hu Jintao .



Mainland Chinese demand for Hong Kong homes grows on yuan gains and rising rents

Is China set to benefit from new US Fed chair Kevin Warsh’s policy vision?

How Australia’s mining giants are helping China to globalise the yuan

Panda power: Pakistan to tap China debt market with first sale of yuan-priced notes

Yuan

Six jailed in Shanghai pension graft scandal