China sentences former top finance executive to death for bribery

 

A Chinese court has sentenced the former chairman of a huge state-owned financial company to death after finding him guilty of bribery. It's a rare use of the most severe punishment in a long-running crackdown by Beijing on corruption.
Lai Xiaomin — who used to chair China Huarong Asset Management — was guilty of taking or seeking bribes totaling nearly 1.8 billion yuan ($277 million), a court in the port city of Tianjin said on Tuesday. Chinese state media reported in August that he pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing in the case.
The court said the bribes happened over the 10 years leading up to 2018, when Lai was investigated as part of a broader clampdown on the financial sector.China's court system has a conviction rate of around 99%, according to legal observers, and corruption charges are often used to go after Communist Party insiders who fall afoul of the leadership.
The scale of the crime is unprecedented. Not in the 72 years since the founding of the People's Republic of China has anyone been charged with taking bribes this large, according to an article written by Wang Xiumei, a former Supreme People's Court judge and law professor at Beijing Normal University, and published in the state-owned Legal Daily.
Authorities obviously took note of the historic nature of the crime: As it announced Lai's death sentence, the court in a statement called Lai "lawless and extremely greedy."
Lai is the latest in a string of prominent officials and executives who have fallen from grace in the years since Beijing first began taking steps to curb risks and tighten the Chinese Communist Party's grip on the financial sector.
Xiang Junbo, the former chairman of the defunct China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC), was sentenced in June to 11 years in prison for bribery. And Yang Jiacai, the former assistant chairman of the then-China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC), was sentenced to 16 years in 2018 for accepting bribes. (Both agencies were eventually merged to create the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission.)
But the decision to impose capital punishment on Lai is striking. He is the highest ranked official to receive a death sentence for economic crimes since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012. Before joining Huarong, Lai served as a regulator with stints at the People's Bank of China and the CBRC.
"It fully indicates the [Communist Party's top leadership] is determined in its corruption crackdown," Wang wrote.
CNN Business has been unable to reach representatives for Lai for comment. The timeline for his execution, meanwhile, is unclear. The Supreme People's Court reviews death penalty cases before the punishment is carried out, and Lai may still appeal.