Ex-Officer in Chinese Army Receives Suspended Death Sentence in Graft Case
|
Version 0 of 1. BEIJING — A Chinese military court has handed down a suspended death sentence to a former senior officer who was accused of bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power in his role handling huge sums of money for the army’s logistics department, the state news media reported on Monday. The former officer, Lt. Gen. Gu Junshan, was tried in secret and given a death sentence with a two-year reprieve, a sentence that is often commuted to life, said Xinhua, the state-run news agency. The government confiscated all his ill-gotten assets, which, according to news media accounts, included four truckloads of goods, among them 20 crates of high-end liquor and a solid gold statue of Chairman Mao. General Gu may not be the biggest so-called tiger, or high-level official, netted by Chinese anticorruption investigators, but he was among the first senior military figures to fall, when in 2012 he was quietly dismissed as deputy chief of the General Logistics Department. More important, he is also widely seen as having implicated other army leaders, including two top generals who were subsequently accused of colossal graft. His downfall provided the first public evidence that President Xi Jinping, after just months in power, was determined to tackle graft and gluttony in places where no previous Communist Party leader had dared to venture. Mr. Xi not only spoke of bagging tigers but also set his sights on China’s military, a force of 2.3 million soldiers notoriously riddled with patronage and kickback schemes. The inquiry into General Gu found that he had bought military promotions, pocketed millions of dollars through procurement contracts and presided over a real estate empire that helped his relatives collect a slew of luxury properties. In a commentary posted Monday night, the state-owned Global Times described General Gu as “a giant parasite” whose successful prosecution showed the party’s determination to take on the mighty. The commentary said his undoing would deter other military leaders from self-dealing and help build a more virtuous and loyal armed forces. “Our people’s army, which has never been conquered by enemies on the battlefield and has overcome every hardship, will surely defeat corruption and be reborn,” it said. Because the general’s trial was held in secret, many details of his alleged exploits were not publicly disclosed. But a website run by the People’s Liberation Army said the case was so complicated that the trial had had to be extended multiple times. The article added that General Gu had enjoyed “due process” and that he had had two lawyers who met with him frequently. |