Update | Two top allies of China’s disgraced security tsar Zhou Yongkang jailed for corruption
Former CNPC head Jiang Jiemin and former Sichuan deputy party chief Li Chuncheng together took bribes totalling 54 million yuan
Two top allies of China's disgraced former security tsar Zhou Yongkang have been sentenced to jail terms of 16 and 13 years for corruption.
Jiang Jiemin, who used to chair the state-run China National Petroleum Corporation and later oversaw state-owned firms, received 16 years’ jail while Sichuan province’s former deputy party chief Li Chuncheng was given a 13-year sentence. Both had turned in the bribes they received, and were fined 1 million yuan (HK$1.2 million) each.
Jiang, who received his verdict on Monday in a court in Hanjiang, Hubei province, would not appeal the sentence, according to the court. He had been charged with taking bribes, possessing a large amount of assets from unidentified sources, and abusing his position at a state-owned enterprise.
The former CNPC chairman, either directly or through his wife, received bribes worth about 14 million yuan from 14 sources between 2004 and 2013, the court said. It also ruled that Jiang had, under Zhou’s instruction or suggestion, helped others run businesses that led to “particularly heavy losses of state interest”.
The court said it gave Jiang a lesser punishment because he confessed his crimes, volunteered information about abuse of power by other employees in state-owned firms, and turned in all the bribes he had taken.
Jiang was chairman of CNPC, the parent company of PetroChina, Asia’s biggest oil producer, before being appointed in 2013 to the cabinet body that oversees China's biggest state-owned companies.
Li, who received his verdict on Monday in a court in Xianning, Hubei province, had accepted bribes totalling 39.8 million yuan and caused 572.8 million yuan worth of losses in public property, according to the court.
The former Sichuan deputy party chief was given a lenient sentence because he confessed his crimes, “performed major meritorious services” and turned in the bribes, the court ruled.
Several senior figures from Sichuan and the state-owned oil industry had been detained prior to the downfall of Zhou, who had built his powerbase in the province, the petroleum sector and in the security apparatus.
Zhou was in June sentenced to life in jail on charges of taking bribes, abuse of power and intentionally leaking state secrets.
Jiang, 59, a prominent Zhou protégé, is a key member of the so-called Petroleum Gang, a Communist Party faction named by Xinhua.
Li, 58, was the first provincial-level official to fall to President Xi Jinping’s corruption crackdown. The authorities began investigating him for graft in December 2012. He was vice-mayor of Chengdu in 1998 and rose up the party ranks when Zhou was Sichuan party chief.
