Corrupt wives of fallen Chinese officials under spotlight
Staff Reporter
2015-03-09
Before they were in prison: Gu Kailai and Bo Xilai. (Internet photo)
The recent downfall of Wu Fangfang, wife of Zhejiang military region political commisar Guo Zhenggang, has shone the spotlight on the spouses of corrupt Chinese officials, reports Duowei News, a US-based Chinese political news website.
Wu was reportedly placed under investigation in February for fraud related to a business dispute between tenants of a commercial complex that she runs. Her husband, the son of retired Central Military Commission vice-chair Guo Boxiong, was placed under a corruption probe himself last week.
In recent years, there has usually been a woman behind every male official probed for corruption, be it a spouse or mistress, Duowei said. In some cases, the woman is used by the official — willingly or unwillingly — as an intermediary to conceal illicit funds or deals, though in many instances the woman is just as corrupt as the official or worse, surreptitiously amassing wealth through shady channels or promising promotions from their husbands in exchange for money.
The most high-profile wife of a fallen official since President Xi Jinping commenced his anti-graft sweep in early 2013 is Gu Kailai, the spouse of disgraced Chongqing Communist Party chief Bo Xilai. Gu, a former high-flying lawyer, was convicted of using her husband's position and connections to make millions of dollars through business and property investment. She was handed a suspended death sentence for the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood over conflicting commercial interests.
Her attempt to cover up Heywood's murder is said to have led to the infamous mad dash to the US consulate in Chengdu by Bo's police chief, Wang Lijun, the incident which sparked Bo's spectacular fall from grace and life sentence for corruption.
Another prominent spouse is Gu Liping — the wife of former presidential aide Ling Jihua — who was probed for allegedly using her husband's political influence to amass a staggering amount of illicit wealth through her charitable organizations. Reports of Gu Liping's misdeeds began surfacing around the time her husband, best known as the political "fixer" of former president Hu Jintao, was detained by authorities for unspecified "serious discipline violations" at the end of last year.
Gu Liping has also been linked to Liu Zhijun, the former railways minister who was given a suspended death sentence for corruption in 2013, after she allegedly made as much as 4 billion yuan (US$640 million) from high-speed rail projects. She is even said to have managed Zhou Yongkang's astronomical assets in the retired oil and political tsar's power base of southerwestern China's Sichuan province. Zhou, a former member of the Politburo Standing Committee, China's top decision-making body, became the highest-ranking official since the Cultural Revolution to be purged when he was placed under investigation last July. He was expelled from the party in December.
Zhou's second wife Jia Xiaoye, a former anchor for state broadcaster CCTV, is rumored to have accepted bribes in exchange for promising promotions from her husband. Reports claim that Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun once gave Jia large sums of cash and jewelry as a birthday present.
Yu Lifang, the wife of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference vice-chair Su Rong, is yet another example. Chinese media have said the corruption probe into Su announced last June was linked to his time as party chief of eastern China's Jiangxi province and that Yu took bribes related to land deals and construction projects.
