The former board chairman of the Northeast Expressway Co Ltd was
sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve after being convicted
on five counts of corruption, including bribery.
Under a final ruling handed down on Tuesday by the Intermediate
People's Court of Baicheng, Jilin Province, Zhang Xiaoguang was
found guilty of taking bribes, corruption, embezzlement of public
funds, illegally seeking private interest on behalf of relatives
and possessing major assets for which he could not account, the
Beijing News reported.
In addition to his convictions, Zhang was also stripped of his
political rights for life and his personal property was
confiscated.
The five counts involved 50 million yuan ($6.45 million), but
there was no breakdown for each count.
According to the newspaper, Zhang's case is believed to be
connected with another incident in which Gao Shan, former head of a
branch of the Bank of China (BOC) on Hesong Street in Harbin, the
capital of Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, allegedly
siphoned 1 billion yuan ($130 million) from customers' accounts to
Canada.
The Ministry of Public Security has asked Canada to extradite
Gao, who fled after sending the funds to Canada in 2005, and
another suspect, Li Dongzhe. They are under the surveillance of
Canadian police.
Zhang's case was complex, as shown by the 36-page court verdict
that ran to nearly 30,000 Chinese characters.
Zhang was first arrested on January 13, 2005, on charges of
misappropriating public funds.
Northeast Expressway Co Ltd, a publicly listed company that
operates an expressway, among other businesses, said two days later
in a public announcement that 293 million yuan ($37.8 million) of
its funds were missing from the BOC's Hesong Street branch. Shortly
afterwards, Gao, chief of the branch, was discovered to have fled
overseas.
Zhang's first trial commenced at the Intermediate People's Court
of Baicheng in September, last year. However, it was soon called
off at the request of public prosecutors for further investigation,
following the detention of Dong Fang, former general manager of
Donggao Science and Technologies Oils Co Ltd, a subsidiary of
Northeast Expressway, who reportedly gave Zhang 10 million yuan in
bribes.
Public prosecutors claimed in their indictment that Zhang
deposited funds from his company at the BOC Hesong Street branch,
after having accepted bribes from Li Dongzhe, the mastermind behind
the BOC case, which eventually led to the loss of Northeast
Expressway Co Ltd's money.
(Xinhua News Agency December 7, 2007)