CNPC anti-corruption head said to be detained for investigation

China National Petroleum Corp.’s executive in charge of rooting out graft has been detained by authorities, according to two officials at the country’s biggest oil and gas producer.
Wang Lixin, the head of the discipline and inspection department at the state-owned company, has been held for investigation since late September, said the officials, who requested their names not be used because the information isn’t public. At least two directors under Wang are also being investigated, they said.
The officials said they don’t know the specific date that Wang was detained or whether he’s being investigated by anti-corruption authorities that have snared at least seven executives at the company. The most powerful was Zhou Yongkang, CNPC’s former chairman, in July.
Oil giants CNPC and its Hong Kong-listed unit PetroChina Co. have been in the spotlight of President Xi Jinping’s anti-graft campaign since August 2013, targeted by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Communist Party’s top graft-busting agency, known as the CCDI.
While shares in PetroChina rallied in the aftermath of the Zhou probe as investors bet the worst of the investigations were over, Wang’s detention may suggest that’s not the case.
The CCDI didn’t respond to an e-mail seeking information on Wang. Telephone calls to Wang at his CNPC office were unanswered. Qu Guangxue, CNPC’s Beijing-based spokesman, didn’t answer two calls to his office.
As a former Politburo Standing Committee member, Zhou was the highest-level China official detained in Xi’s drive to tackle corruption in the hierarchy.
If Wang is in the hands of the CCDI, he would be the highest-ranking executive to be investigated at CNPC or PetroChina since the probe of the chairman of the company’s gas distribution arm, Kunlun Energy Co. The Kunlun official, Wen Qingshan, resigned in December last year and hasn’t been seen in public since.
Corruption investigations into China’s state-controlled companies are conducted by the CCDI, whose current head, Wang Qishan, is a member of the party’s Politburo Standing Committee, the country’s most powerful decision-making authority.
The CCDI investigates and detains party members suspected of graft in an extra-legal system that functions outside of the country’s courts of law and police structure.
Members deemed to have violated party rules or the country’s laws are usually expelled from the party before being handed over for prosecution under the criminal justice system.
Former CNPC and PetroChina Chairman Jiang Jiemin was investigated by the CCDI last September, a few months after he was promoted to minister in China’s state-owned assets regulatory body. He was expelled from the party in July and handed over to prosecutors, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
While little is known about the inner workings of the CCDI, it also hasn’t escaped investigation.
In September last year, six CCDI officials were indicted in the death of Yu Qiyi, an engineer at a state-owned company who had been detained, according to a BBC report citing the Beijing Times and prosecution documents. The indictment said Yu had been tortured, and drowned after repeated dunkings in a bucket of ice water. Aibing Guo, Bloomberg