Another rail official goes off the rails, with a new twist
What initially seemed like just another case of corruption tickles the public's fancy with details of academic intrigue
Perhaps it is not surprising that another corruption trial involving a former railways official failed to attract much media attention at first.
After all, we've seen so many officials from the now-defunct Railways Ministry tried lately. Charges that Zhang Shuguang , the agency's former deputy chief engineer and transport bureau chief, took 47 million yuan (HK$59 million) in bribes might not seem all that shocking.
But the public's interest was piqued when The Beijing News said on Thursday that Zhang had confessed to collecting nearly half of the money for two unsuccessful bids to secure a seat on the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
Zhang did not say how much he actually ended up spending on the campaigns or whether anyone at the academy took the bait.
Zhang, who pleaded guilty at a one-day trial on Tuesday, told the court he accepted 23 million yuan from three businessmen to finance his bids for a CAS seat. He stood for election in 2007 and 2009, falling seven votes short in the first round and one vote short in the second.
Even after his last attempt failed, he solicited a further five million yuan bribe from one of the businessmen so he could show some gratitude to CAS members who had supported his bid, The Beijing News said.
Faced with such reports, the CAS told Xinhua it had not received any complaints of election bribery before. The top government science think tank promised to hold to account any members implicated in Zhang's trial, but stopped short of vowing its own investigation.