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Mimi Lau

Former Zhongshan mayor Li Qihong is standing trial on charges of insider trading involving a listed state-owned company, disclosing insider information and bribery, local media reports.
The trial, which began yesterday at Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court, is to continue today.
Reports said Li and her relatives had benefited to the tune of 19.3 million yuan (HK$22.9 million) from alleged insider trading of Zhongshan Public Utilities Group, with assets exceeding 5 billion yuan. The listed company covers public services such as water, natural gas supply, sewage, wet markets, real estate development and investment in the city. 
Xinhua reported that Li was also charged with taking bribes of more than 500,000 yuan in cash.
News portal jcrb.com,  an online news platform under the Supreme People's Procuratorate, reported that 10 people stood trial yesterday and that half of them were Li's family members, including her husband and brother. 
She was quoted by the news portal as saying she believed her actions had violated only Communist Party principles, as she was ignorant of the regulations governing securities and stock trading.
About the charges facing her, Li said: 'I almost had a mental breakdown. This is the most painful lesson in the 50-plus years of my life.'
Li also told the court that she had turned herself in after being placed under shuanggui, a form of detention imposed exclusively on party officials by the party's anti-graft watchdog.
Li thus became the first top Zhongshan official to face corruption charges since 1984, when it was upgraded from a county to a city. 
Li, a Zhongshan native, made her way in politics after working as a straw weaver aged 16. Her case has attracted heavy media coverage. 
Political scholars previously commented that the crackdown was a fight between Guangdong party boss Wang Yang   and local powers trying to block Wang's administrative reform plan, which urges local governments to reduce their interference in enterprises and the market.
In May last year, the Supreme People's Procuratorate  and the Ministry of Public Security issued new rules saying that insiders who traded securities worth more than 500,000 yuan or benefited from insider trading worth more than 150,000 yuan would be prosecuted.



Trial of Zhongshan's former mayor begins