China’s former justice minister faces life imprisonment after a court sentenced him to a suspended death sentence on Thursday for taking bribes and “bending the law.”
Fu Zhenghua’s death sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment after a two-year pardon, the Intermediate People’s Court in Changchun city said in a statement.
The high-profile sentencing — part of a sweeping anti-graft campaign — comes just three weeks before a key political meeting at which President Xi Jinping is expected to receive an unprecedented third term.
The court said former politician Fu abused his power in a number of senior positions from 2005 to 2021.
“[He will be]stripped of political rights for life and all personal property should be confiscated,” he added.
Fu, 67, had accepted bribes worth over 117 million yuan ($16.5 million), according to the court.
Between 2014 and 2015, when Fu was head of the Beijing Public Security Bureau, the court said he hid evidence of his brother Fu Weihua’s alleged crimes and failed to handle the case in accordance with the law.
– Anti-Corruption Campaign –
During his tenure as Beijing’s top police officer, Fu is said to have headed the corruption investigation into Zhou Yongkang, the former security chief who was jailed in 2015 in one of the anti-graft campaign’s most high-profile cases.
Fu was a member of the Central Political and Legal Commission and Minister of Justice before retiring in May 2020.
He was serving as deputy director of the Committee on Social and Legal Affairs at the Standing Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) – a largely ceremonial advisory body – when anti-graft authorities opened an investigation into his dealings last October.
More than a million officials have been fined as part of the anti-corruption campaign, which critics say has also served to eliminate Xi’s political enemies since he came to power in 2013.
In the run-up to the party congress in mid-October, the Chinese head of state accelerated the pace of the anti-graft campaign.
Three former police chiefs, all charged with bribery, were handed harsh sentences on corruption charges on Wednesday.
Gong Daoan, former Shanghai police chief; Deng Huilin, former Chongqing Police Chief; and Liu Xinyun, former police chief of coal-rich Shanxi Province, were sentenced by separate courts in Hebei Province.
Gong, a former deputy mayor and director of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau, was sentenced to life imprisonment for accepting 73.43 million yuan ($10.4 million) worth of bribes, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
Deng, the former director of the Chongqing Public Security Bureau, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for accepting 42.67 million yuan ($6 million) in bribes, CCTV said.
Liu, the former top police officer in Shanxi, was jailed for 14 years for accepting 13.33 million (US$1.9 million) worth of bribes, CCTV reported.
