Chinese Businesswoman Convicted of Bribery Is Sentenced to 20 Years
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Version 0 of 1. BEIJING — A prominent businesswoman convicted of bribery linked to China’s disgraced former railroads minister was sentenced on Tuesday by a court in Beijing to 20 years in prison and ordered to pay the largest fine yet amid President Xi Jinping’s anticorruption campaign. Ding Yuxin, 59, also known as Ding Shumiao, was fined 2.5 billion renminbi, or about $408 million, for paying bribes and conducting illegal business, according to a microblog post by the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court, which also ordered the confiscation of personal assets worth $3.2 million. The court found that Ms. Ding used her influence with the former railroads minister, Liu Zhijun, to help railroad construction contractors win bids for 57 projects from 2007 to 2010, reported Xinhua, the state-run news agency. She funneled $8 million worth of kickbacks to Mr. Liu in return for his assistance with the contracts, while taking an illegal cut of more than $325 million for herself. At her trial in September, Ms. Ding was cast as the central figure in a major corruption scandal surrounding Mr. Liu, to whom the state news media reported she provided cash and women for sexual favors. Last year, the former minister was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for bribery and abuse of power. At the time of his removal from office in 2011, a leaked directive from the Central Propaganda Bureau banned the news media from reporting that Mr. Liu “had 18 mistresses.” Though Ms. Ding had only an elementary school education and once worked as an egg seller, she built a large business empire with interests in coal and rail that gave her access to Mr. Liu, who was minister of railroads from 2003 until 2011, an era that saw China’s high-speed rail network grow to become the world’s largest, but also left the rail system drowning in debt. |