Senior Guangdong official Zhou Zhenhong gets suspended death sentence for graft
Zhou Zhenhong sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for taking 24.64 million yuan in bribes and having 37 million yuan of property from unidentified sources
PUBLISHED : Friday, 28 February, 2014, 3:16pm
UPDATED : Friday, 28 February, 2014, 4:02pm
Andrea Chen [email protected]
Zhou Zhenhong. Photo: Screenshot via Weibo
A former senior regional official from Guangdong province was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve on Friday for taking 24.64 million yuan (HK$31.19 million) in bribes and having 37 million yuan of property from unidentified sources, Henan High People’s Court posted on its official Tencent Weibo account on Friday morning.
Xinyang Intermediate People’s Court heard Zhou Zhenhong, the former chief of the United Front Work Department in southern China’s Guangdong province, took advantage of his position to sell official positions, including delegates of the People’s Political Consultative Conference, and took millions in bribes.
Zhou was also found to have a huge amount of property from unidentified sources.
The court decided to give Zhou a reprieve as he had given back all his illicit gains, the judgment said.
Zhou was placed under investigation in January 2012 and was stripped of his party membership and official posts a year later, amid a massive corruption scandal in Guangdong’s Maoming, where Zhou was party secretary from 2002 to 2007.
The party’s anti-graft agency sent dozens of disciplinary officials to Maoming last year as part of an investigation that has seen more than 300 local officials sacked, with Zhou being the highest-ranking.
Xinhua reported last year that the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection found Zhou had received large quantities of cash and expensive gifts.
The investigation stems from President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign to bring down both the “small flies” and the “big tigers”.
