China: former big boss sentenced to death for corruption
Safes, wads of bills and so much money that he did not dare to spend it, Lai Xiaomin, 59, was found guilty of corruption on Tuesday, January 5, 2021.
Reuters
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3 min
He is the second top official sentenced to death for corruption in China.
Lai Xiaomin, 59, was found guilty on Tuesday January 5, 2020 of having obtained 215 million euros in bribes.
The former boss of financial conglomerate China Huarong was also accused of bigamy.
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From our correspondent in Beijing
,
Stéphane Lagarde
The sanction is up to the affront, because the Huarong Asset Management scandal also marks the fragility of the control system of financial institutions in China.
As the head of one of the biggest bad debt managers put in place by the government, Lai Xiaomin was supposed to help clean up the banking sector.
But the former big boss did not show the example, to say the least.
In its judgment, Tianjin Intermediate People's Court No. 2 describes a man who has "
no respect for the law and extremely greedy
."
"
Full cupboards
The press release also refers to "
extremely large amounts, as well as particularly serious circumstances and extremely malicious intentions
".
The interested party claims not to have spent a yuan, but according to the investigators, his happiness was to have the cupboards full of them: images of bundles of banknotes stored in an apartment transformed into a safe were broadcast when his arrest was reported by state media.
Forced into cathodic confessions, as every time a senior official finds himself before the judges, the defendant sees what is considered to be proof of his amorality exposed in public.
Bigamy
Looking down, framed by two policemen taller than himself, Lai Xiaomin was also found guilty of "
living with other women
", outside of his marriage, from which he had illegitimate children.
Lai had pleaded guilty to all counts in August during his trial last summer.
His death sentence was not suspended.
Unless changed, he could therefore be the first convicted of corruption to be executed in a decade in China, and the executions of the former mayors of the wealthy cities of Hangzhou and Suzhou on the east coast in 2011.
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