China arrests ex-secret police boss on corruption charges
- Sun Lijun, a former vice-minister of public security, was formally arrested on suspicion of taking bribes, the state prosecutor said
- Probe lasting 17 months indicates complexity of case involving man with ‘hugely inflated political ambitions’ and secret stash of ‘confidential materials’
In a statement, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate said that the National Supervisory Commission, the corruption watchdog for civil servants, had concluded its investigation into Sun over suspicions of bribe-taking and transferred the case to the prosecutors.
“The Supreme People’s Procuratorate recently made a decision to arrest Sun Lijun on suspicion of accepting bribes,” the statement said. “The case is being further processed.”
Sun, 52, was the personal aide to former security tsar Meng Jianzhu, head of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission from 2012 to 2017. He was later promoted to lead the powerful First Bureau within the Ministry of Public Security, looking after China’s secret police force overseeing domestic security and security matters for Hong Kong and Macau.
The party’s internal investigation into Sun lasted 17 months, substantially longer than the six to nine months usually spent on corruption cases, indicating the complexity of the case and challenges faced by investigators.
On September 30, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the party’s top anti-corruption body, issued a harshly worded statement slamming Sun for using professional counter-investigation methods learned in the line of work to resist investigators and failing to confess “[his] problems truthfully” to them.
