First ‘tiger’ snared in corruption crackdown stands trial

Former Sichuan deputy party chief Li Chuncheng stands trial at the Xianning Municipal Intermediate People’s Court in Xianning, Hubei Province

The Chinese Communist Party official whose downfall ushered in a nationwide corruption crackdown that continues to shake local industries raised no objections at his one-day graft trial yesterday.
Li Chuncheng, 59, a former deputy party chief in China’s western Sichuan province, didn’t dispute charges that he accepted bribes and abused power, according to a posting on the official Weibo account of the Xianning Intermediate People’s Court in Hubei.
“Li will not appeal the verdict,” his lawyer Shi Yuchen, said by phone. “He said he’ll accept any verdict ruled by the court.”
The case was one of several high-profile prosecutions being wrapped up ahead of the trial of retired public security czar Zhou Yongkang, of whom Li was a top aide. The detention of Li in December 2012 – less than a month after President Xi Jinping took power – was the indication that the new leader’s pledged graft crackdown could shake the highest levels state power.
The investigation will culminate in the trial of Zhou, who, as a former member of the Politburo Standing Committee, is China’s most senior official to face corruption charges.
“The case was the breakthrough of the investigation into Zhou,” said Zhang Ming, a professor of political science at Renmin University in Beijing. “Zhou’s downfall had been just speculation, but the announcement of the Li probe laid everything out to the public and told them that the authorities would go after Zhou.”
Xi’s campaign to flush out high-level “tigers” as well as lowly “flies” had ensnared more than 100,000 party cadres as of December, according to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
The crackdown is still reverberating through the markets in its third year, as once high-flying officials swear off luxury goods, forgo banquets and steer clear of casinos in Macau. A graft investigation first sparked financial woes of the Shenzhen-based Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd., which this week became the first local developer to default on its dollar debt.
About 60 people attended Li’s trial yesterday, the court said on its Weibo account, posting two pictures of the gray-haired former official. The case follows that of Jiang Jiemin, a former China National Petroleum Corp. chairman and another ally of Zhou, who pleaded guilty of accepting bribes and abusing power last week after one day of proceedings.
Li had worked more than a decade in the resource-rich Sichuan, including a period in which Zhou was provincial party chief. He “used his position to seek gains for other people” and his wrongdoing “caused huge financial losses for the country,” CCDI said last April while announcing his expulsion from the party.
Zhou is awaiting trial for allegations of leaking official secrets and accepted “huge bribes” personally and through his family. Bloomberg