BEIJING, Sept 19 (Reuters) - China sentenced a former senior provincial
official to 11 years in jail for taking bribes, the China News Agency reported
on Tuesday, adding to the toll of cadres punished in the goverment's
anti-corruption drive.
Hou Wujie. [File] |
The former deputy Communist Party secretary of coal-rich Shanxi province in
northern China, Hou Wujie, was sentenced by a Beijing court on Monday, the news
agency reported.
According to the report, Hou took bribes in 2000 totalling 880,000 yuan
($110,000) from a deputy police chief of Taiyuan, Shanxi's capital, who had
hoped to take the top police job there. Hou "fully confessed" to his misdeeds,
the report said.
China's President Hu Jintao has warned that widespread official corruption is
undermining public acceptance of Communist Party, and over the weekend the
party's top anti-corruption official again chastised officials.
"Some wallow in feasting and hedonism and lead debauched lives; some take and
give money and even trade in official posts," Wu Guanzheng wrote in the latest
issue of Seeking Truth, the party's ideological journal.
"This could gravely damage relations between officials and the public."
In past months, anti-corruption investigations have claimed several powerful
officials, none of them in the party's top echelon.
Last week, Xu Fangming, former division director in China's Ministry of
Finance, was sentenced to life imprisonment for taking bribes.
In June, Liu Zhihua, a Beijing vice-mayor who oversaw construction for the
2008 Olympics, was dismissed after being accused of corruption and dissolute
behaviour.
More than 100 central government investigators were dispatched to Shanghai in
August to investigate whether money had been siphoned out of the city's 10
billion yuan ($1.25 billion) social security fund through illicit loans or
investments.
The Shanghai corruption probe has implicated two senior city government
officials and at least three prominent executives in real estate, private
investment and a utility firm.
