Official dubbed ‘Bulldozer Mayor’ over infamous demolition policy jailed for corruption
Former mayor of Nanjing, who had a reputation for grand construction projects, took bribes worth 11 million yuan from 'circle of friends'
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 07 April, 2015, 2:23pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 08 April, 2015, 2:09am
Mimi Lau in Guangzhou [email protected]
Former Nanjing mayor Ji Jianye stands trial at the Yantai Intermediate People's Court. Photo: Xinhua
The former mayor of Nanjing, Ji Jianye - known as "Mayor Bulldozer" due to his penchant for construction projects - has been sentenced to 15 years in jail for taking more than 11 million yuan (HK$14 million) in bribes.
The sentence was handed down in the Yantai Intermediate People's Court in Shandong province yesterday. It follows the court's confiscation of two million yuan worth of Ji's personal assets when the hearing concluded in January.
The Yantai court had heard testimonies and evidence showing Ji received 11.32 million yuan in bribes between 1999 and 2012.
Ji had received gifts and cash from a trusted circle of friends that he had built up more than two decades ago.
The circle comprised seven people, most of whom had worked for Ji, and contributed 90 per cent of the bribes Ji received.
The Procuratorate Daily identified one of these as Xu Dongming .
It said that Xu had paid Ji more than 7.7 million in return for tourism, property and highway contracts.
State-run China.com.cn said Zhu Tianxiao , director of Jiangsu Wuzhong Group, had also given Ji cash and gifts.
The report said Zhu paid Ji more than 2.4 million yuan over nine occasions and that in 2010, to celebrate Ji's appointment as mayor, he gave him a famous painting and 200,000 yuan in cash.
Ji, 57, was known as "Mayor Bulldozer" due to his focus on big capital projects, both in Nanjing and during his time as head of Yangzhou .
He was toppled at the end of 2013 during a period in which several Jiangsu officials were probed for graft.
These included Yang Weize , Nanjing's Communist Party boss, and Zhao Shaolin , Jiangsu Communist Party's former secretary general.
Ji and Yang had worked together for three years in Nanjing. Their downfall made Nanjing the first city in the nation to have had both its mayor and party boss replaced since President Xi Jinping came to office.
Yang is still being investigated. A court hearing is pending.
Ji spent his entire political career in Jiangsu, with stints as the mayor and party boss of both Kunshan and Yangzhou. Before taking over Nanjing, Ji had gained a reputation in Yangzhou for rebuilding large parts of the city.
After taking over Nanjing, he ordered the city to tear up and rebuild a main road, even though it was only 16 years old and had been designed to last 50 years.
He also launched a three-year sewerage project with a network of pipes spanning 20,000 hectares and costing 18.3 billion yuan, but the infrastructure project was suspended a few days after he was removed.
Mainland media outlets said that further prosecutions were likely.
