New | Ex-chief of Hebei reform commission held for graft probe: report
A former director of Hebei province’s reform commission was apprehended by anti-graft authorities during the annual gathering of the provincial people’s congress, a report said.
Liu Xueku, 60, now facing a corruption investigation, was hauled away from the meeting by party discipline supervisors on the last day of the event which ended on Sunday, an unnamed source from the congress was quoted by as saying.
The congress source said other deputies had also been taken away for investigation during this year’s meeting.
There was speculation that the probe against Liu might have something to do with his work in Langfang city, where he was born and where he was a top leader during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Several local politicians were quoted as saying that members of Liu’s family were also under investigation, and that the case’s whistle-blower was one of Liu’s former subordinates.
Liu started as an accountant at a food company in Langfang’s Dachang Hui autonomous county. In 2003, he rose to become the province’s foreign trade department deputy director, and later was named deputy chief of the development and reform commission.
In 2006, he was transferred to Cangzhou city, south of Langfang, to be its deputy party secretary.
Between January and March last year, he served as director of the development and reform commission.
But his record was placed under suspicion when an online post late last month showed a litany of his supposed crimes between 1997 and April last year, including taking bribes, approving land-use applications against the rules, keeping mistresses and breaking the one-child policy.
The post alleged that it was widely known in Hebei circles that Liu’s graft case involved up to 200 million yuan (HK$255 million) and that he owned property in several cities.
