Chongqing officials jailed for corruption

By Cui Xiaohuo and Ma Wei (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-11-12 07:28

Two senior officials involved in a property market corruption scandal in southwest China's Chongqing received jail sentences on Tuesday.

Huang Yun, a former district chief, and Wang Bin, a former housing official, were jailed for 13 years and 12 years, respectively, by the No 5 intermediate people's court of Chongqing.

Both have decided not to appeal against their sentences.

The two were among a group of eight local officials charged with providing cheap land to developers in exchange for bribes over the past 10 years when the city was experiencing a real estate boom.

Huang, 47, was charged with receiving more than 2.3 million yuan ($337,000) in bribes on 39 occasions between 1997 and this year.

The other official, Wang accepted money and presents from real estate developers worth more than 1.7 million yuan, the court said.

The local media reported that on one occasion in 2006, Wang met developers on his arrival at Shenzhen airport during a Lunar New Year vacation and received $5,000 in cash.

The bribery network was exposed in July last year when a real estate developer reported to the anti-graft agency that an official accepted a bribe from him but did not help him.

Three other officials in the case received jail sentences last December while one, Wang Zheng, a district boss, got the death sentence with a two-year probation.

The four officials had received bribes totaling 19.91 million yuan, prosecutors said.

As investigations into the case continue, the former chief of the city's municipal urban planning bureau, Jiang Yong, has also been questioned, but there have been no further developments.

The local media reported that Jiang's deputy, Liang Xiaoqi, whose corruption trial recently began, introduced Jiang to various developers and he allegedly began to accept bribes from them in January 2005.

In a separate corruption trial in Chongqing on Monday, Wang Dabing, a former construction official of Beibei district, was jailed for 10 years for accepting 240,000 yuan in bribes.

Meanwhile, Guo Shenggui, former president of the Beijing's Xicheng district court, decided Tuesday to give up his appeal against the death sentence with a two-year probation for accepting 7.97 million yuan in bribes.