The former transport chief of east China's Zhejiang Province has been sentenced to life
imprisonment for taking bribes, Huzhou Intermediate People's Court
announced on Wednesday.
Zhao Zhanqi, 58, had received 6.2 million yuan (US$816,000) in
bribes from 1994 to 2006, when he held the posts of vice director
of the provincial development and planning commission, deputy head
of the Xiaoshan airport construction headquarters and head of the
provincial communications department, the court heard.
Zhao was arrested in September last year and went to trial in
April on charges of taking bribes, usually under the guise of
"consultation fees" and "business loans" often paid through his
girlfriend or his son, and using his authority to influence project
tenders and contracts.
In 1997, Zhao took 550,000 yuan (US$72,300) through his mistress
Wang Peiying from the Longyuan Construction Group Co. Ltd, and
helped the company beat 70 other bidders for the contract to build
the airport terminal.
In return for bribes, he helped other firms seal construction
contracts on luggage handling facilities and a filling station at
the airport.
In 2005, he helped the Hangzhou Guoyi Expressway and Bridge
Construction Co., Ltd win an eight-billion-yuan contract on the
highway circling the Hangzhou city. He had hinted to Yu Guoxiang,
manager of the company, that he needed money for his son's wedding.
Yu "loaned" three million yuan to Zhao, and the money was never
returned.
The court heard that about 3.5 million yuan (US$460,000) had
been retrieved, and the rest of the money remained to be
recovered.
Zhao's case is the latest in a series of corruption convictions
involving Chinese transport officials. Most of China's
transportation infrastructure projects are funded and supervised by
local governments, meaning they must be approved and supervised by
powerful local government officials.
So far, 18 heads of communications departments in China have
been convicted of corruption charges.
Last year, Wang Xingyao, former director of the Anhui transport
department, was sentenced ten years in prison for accepting bribes
totaling 135,300 yuan from a construction company in southern
Guangdong Province and having more than 830,000 yuan in assets for
which he could not account.
Earlier in 2006, Zhang Quan, former deputy director of the
transport department in Hebei Province, was jailed for 14 years for
taking more than two million yuan in bribes. The case involved 26
other local officials and a total of 40 million yuan.
In December, Lu Wanli, a transport official in southwest China's
Guizhou Province, was executed after being convicted of taking
millions of dollars in bribes.
Lu, former director of the Guizhou Provincial Department of
Transportation, was found to have accepted more than 25.6 million
yuan in bribes from June 1998 to January 2002.
On Sunday, the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's
Procuratorate issued a document targeting "new forms of
corruption", including bribes disguised as stocks, houses and
gambling wins, and bribes given after their tenures or through
relatives or other third parties. In some circumstances, an
official may not be the owner of the bribe, but he or she can still
be convicted of bribery because the intention of the briber is
clear, the document read.
(Xinhua News Agency July 12, 2007)