Associate of Zhou Yongkang, China’s Fallen Security Chief, Admits Taking Bribes
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Version 0 of 1. HONG KONG — In early December 2012, a senior official from Sichuan Province in southwestern China became the first prominent figure to fall in an anticorruption crackdown that would eventually net tens of thousands of Communist Party officials. After losing his job, his freedom and his coveted party membership, the official, Li Chuncheng, confessed to taking bribes in a one-day trial this week, a court said. The court in the city of Xianning in central China made it clear that the real purpose of Mr. Li’s trial was to build a case against a much more powerful official, the former security chief Zhou Yongkang. Mr. Zhou lost his own freedom about a year after Mr. Li did, in the highest-level corruption case in the more than 65 years that the Communist Party has ruled China. While Mr. Li served as a party official in Sichuan, rising to the rank of provincial deputy party chief, he “assisted others in seeking profits under the instruction of Zhou Yongkang,” the court said in a summary of Thursday’s trial posted on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media service. Mr. Li, who turns 59 this month, served under Mr. Zhou when the latter was the top official in Sichuan from 1999 to 2002. The court has yet to announce a verdict in Mr. Li’s case. The charges against Mr. Li, his confession and his one-day trial in a small city in central China were almost a repeat of the proceedings last week against another former senior official, Jiang Jiemin, who once served as chairman of China National Petroleum Corporation. Mr. Jiang’s trial also centered on his taking orders from Mr. Zhou, in this case to illegally parcel out lucrative contracts for oil and gas contracts. Mr. Zhou, before he oversaw China’s law enforcement apparatus, spent his career in the oil industry and was a predecessor of Mr. Jiang’s at the top post at the state-owned energy company. Both trials hinted at what is in store for Mr. Zhou, 72，as prosecutors paint a picture of a man who used underlings to enhance his own family’s wealth as well as that of his political allies. They also had another thing in common: the relatively paltry sums cited by the state in their cases, in a country where the families of top officials have accumulated billions of dollars in documented assets. In Mr. Li’s case, he and his wife accepted about 40 million Chinese renminbi, or about $6.5 million, in bribes, the court said. In Mr. Jiang’s case, he confessed to taking about $2.25 million in bribes and having another $2.4 million in unexplained wealth. Mr. Zhou’s family held at least $160 million in assets, The New York Times reported last year. Mr. Zhou was indicted this month on charges of bribery, abusing power and disclosing state secrets, and awaits trial. |