China’s former vice-minister of police sentenced to life for accepting $91mn in bribes | World News

BEIJING: A former Chinese language deputy public safety minister condemned earlier for damaging the ruling Communist celebration’s unity, taking massive bribes and “deserting” his publish throughout China’s preliminary combat in opposition to Covid-19, has been jailed for all times, a provincial court docket introduced on Friday.

Solar Lijun, 53, was handed a suspended dying sentence that will probably be commuted to a life in jail after two years with none risk of parole, official information company, Xinhua, stated in a report on Friday.

Solar had overseen the crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2017 and was additionally a part of the staff of officers initially dispatched to the central Chinese language metropolis of Wuhan to oversee the containment of the Covid-19 virus in early 2020.

That is the second high-profile sentencing in two days and a part of a flurry of indictments this month as President Xi Jinping’s anti-graft marketing campaign nets former high officers simply weeks forward of the Communist celebration congress the place he's anticipated to safe an unprecedented third time period.

The court docket stated Solar had abused his energy in a variety of influential positions between 2001 and 2020, and pleaded responsible in July to accepting greater than 646 million yuan ($91 million) in bribes.

China’s public safety ministry denounced him and the “venomous” affect of his “political clique” in January.

A state media report revealed final 12 months stated he had deserted his publish in the course of the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan.

“The investigation discovered that on the frontline of preventing the Covid-19 epidemic, Solar abandoned his publish. He additionally possessed confidential supplies with out authorisation and engaged in superstitious actions for a very long time,” the report stated.

Investigators additionally stated Solar had “…by no means stayed true to the celebration’s beliefs and religion, displayed extraordinarily inflated political ambition and really poor political integrity, issued groundless criticisms of the celebration’s insurance policies, and unfold political rumours”.

Tangshan incident sentencing

The first suspect within the brutal beating of 4 ladies at a barbecue restaurant in Tangshan in northern China’s Hebei province in June was sentenced to 24 years in jail and fined 320,000 yuan ($45,215) by an area court docket on Friday.

Footage of the lads assaulting the ladies after one in every of them rejected advances of the primary suspect was broadly shared on-line, sparking outrage country-wide outrage.

In all, 28 individuals associated to the incident had been arrested by the top of final month.

The remaining 27 defendants had been sentenced from six months to 11 years in jail.

“Chen Jizhi, the prime wrongdoer and different 5 defendants will correspondingly compensate the 4 victims for prices incurred for medical therapy, nursing, meals subsidies, transportation and different losses,” state-run tabloid, International Instances reported citing the court docket’s order.