Former railways ministry official given suspended death sentence
Zhang Shuguang was accused of accepting bribes of more than 47 million yuan
PUBLISHED : Friday, 17 October, 2014, 11:04am
UPDATED : Friday, 17 October, 2014, 12:57pm
Nectar Gan [email protected]
Zhang Shuguang, the former director of the railways ministry’s transport bureau and its deputy chief engineer, appears in court. Photo: Weibo
The former deputy chief engineer of the disbanded railways ministry has been given a suspended death sentence for corruption, Xinhua reported this morning.
Zhang Shuguang, who was once the director of the ministry’s transport bureau and its deputy chief engineer, was accused of accepting bribes of more than 47 million yuan (HK$59.5 million) between 2000 and 2011, while he was in charge of procuring rolling stock and other equipment for China’s railway expansion projects, the report said.
The Beijing’s No 2 Intermediate People’s Court handed Zhang a the suspended death sentence, which is usually implemented as a life sentence, this morning. He will also be deprived of all political rights for life and his personal property will be confiscated.
The 58-year-old was accused of taking bribes in exchange for using his position to help several companies win contracts for a series of high-speed rail projects.
Zhang was known for helping to promote foreign high-speed rail technology on the mainland, and he played an integral role in the rail system’s development. He was also a close associate of Liu Zhijun , the former railways minister who was given a suspended death sentence for fostering corruption throughout the railway system during his tenure and accepting 64.6 million yuan in bribes.
Liu had “the main leadership responsibility” for the deadly high-speed train crash in Zhejiang’s Wenzhou that killed 40 people in July 2011, earlier reports said.
Zhang was sacked from his position in February 2011, soon after Liu’s detention. The railways ministry was later disbanded in March last year amid widespread reports of graft.
Zhang’s case went to court last September. He pleaded guilty to all 13 charges related to bribery.
The charges include accepting bribes worth 10.5 million yuan since 2000 from Yang Jianyu, the former president of Guangzhou Zhongche Railway Vehicles Equipment, which provided “the Blue Arrow” high-speed trains that ran between Guangzhou and Shenzhen until 2012.
Yang testified that he hired Zhang’s mistress on a monthly salary of 16,000 yuan since 2009 just to please Zhang, Xinhua reported. .
During the trial, prosecutors said Zhang had been offered most of the bribes since 2004, when China launched its ambitious high-speed-railway plan after the State Council released its mid-to-long term railway development plan.
According to prosecutors, 10 private and two state-owned companies – China Railway Construction Electrification Bureau Group and China CREC Railway Electrification Bureau Group – offered bribes to Zhang.
The largest bribes came from the owner of a Wuhan rail-related company which, on three occasions between 2007 and 2009, paid Zhang a total of 18.5 million yuan.
Zhang was also accused of extorting 8 million yuan from a railway company owner in Jiangsu and accepting bribes from two rail-related company owners of 10 million and 5 million respectively, because “he needed money” for his attempts to get himself a fellowship in the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2007 and 2008, which were unsuccessful, Xinhua said.
Zhang was one of the most notorious of the so-called naked officials – those who remain in China but relocate their families abroad often to use their ill-gotten proceeds. Mainland media have widely reported that his wife and daughter moved to the US a few years ago and now own a luxury villa in California and have speculated he may have as much as US$2.8 billion stashed away in overseas accounts.
