Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi / Bloomberg
Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi / Bloomberg
Beijing (AP) – The former head of a state-owned asset management company in China was executed on Friday on charges of taking bribes in an unusually severe sentence for a recent corruption case.
Lai Xiaomin of China Huarong Asset Management Co., was among thousands of officials caught in a long-running anti-graft campaign led by President Xi Jinping. Others, including the former Chinese insurance regulator, have been sentenced to prison.
Lai, 58, was killed by a court in Tianjin, east of Beijing, the government said.
Tianjin’s Second Intermediate People’s Court ruled in January that the death was justified because Lai took a “particularly huge” bribe to make investments, offer construction contracts, help with promotions and other favors.
Lai has demanded or collected 1.8 billion yuan ($ 260 million) over a decade, the court said. A bribe was said to exceed 600 million yuan ($ 93 million). He was also convicted of embezzling more than 25 million yuan ($ 4 million) and starting a second family while still married to his first wife.
Lai “endangered national financial security and financial stability,” a comment on the state TV website said.
The death penalty “was his own responsibility and he deserved it,” the comment said.
Most death sentences imposed by Chinese courts are suspended for two years and are usually commuted to life. The death penalty, without the chance of a postponement, is rare.
Huarong is one of four entities created in the 1990s to buy non-performing loans from government-owned banks. They have expanded into the fields of banking, insurance, real estate finance and other fields.
Lai was investigated by the ruling anti-corruption body of the Communist Party in 2018 and expelled from the party later that year.
Lai was also accused of squandering public money, illegally holding banquets, engaging in sexual relations with several women and taking bribes, the anti-corruption agency said in a statement.
2018.
Investigators confiscated hundreds of millions of yuan (tens of millions of dollars) in cash from Lai’s properties, Chinese business news magazine Caixin reported in 2018.