China Mobile executive goes on trial for bribery
A former vice-chairman at China Mobile, the world's biggest cellphone service operator, went on trial in Hebei province yesterday for allegedly taking 7.5 million yuan (HK$9 million) in bribes.
Prosecutors said Zhang Chunjiang abused his position by accepting bribes from a private telecommunications company and an advertising agency in Beijing between 1994 and 2009 in return for helping them win bids for projects and collecting debt owed to them.
During that time, he served first as deputy director general of the Posts and Telecommunications Administration in Liaoning province, then as president of China Netcom from 2004 and as China Mobile vice-chairman from 2008.
The prosecutors, who had undertaken an 18-month graft investigation, said authorities had seized all of the alleged bribe money.
Xinhua reported that the prosecutors presented evidence to the Cangzhou Intermediate People's Court in front of members of Zhang's family, reporters and dozens of members of the public attending the open hearing.
Zhang was taken away by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection in December 2009 on suspicion of graft, and at least eight other China Mobile executives had been taken away by police during the past 18 months for corruption, the Caixin Century weekly magazine reported.
In March, Su Jinsheng , chief engineer of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and former head of China Mobile who is allegedly linked to Zhang's corruption case, was detained for questioning, the magazine said.
In May, Shi Wanzhong , a former senior executive of China Mobile, was sentenced to death, suspended for two years, for accepting US$5.06 million in bribes from industrial giant Siemens. An agent of Siemens products was jailed for 15 years in that case for acting as a middleman between Siemens and Shi.
