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A former right-hand man of retired public security tsar Zhou Yongkang has been placed under investigation by the Communist Party's anti-graft watchdog, in the latest sign that the net is closing around the retired political heavyweight.
The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) issued a brief statement last night announcing that Ji Wenlin - a deputy Hainan governor who served as a top Zhou aide for a decade - was being investigated for "serious disciplinary violations". The statement provided no additional details, although CCDI routinely uses the phrase as a euphemism for corruption.
Ji is only the latest Zhou associate to be implicated in corruption amid a wide-ranging probe centred on Zhou's former political power bases of Sichuan province, the state oil sector and the domestic security apparatus.
The corruption investigation into Zhou, a retired member of the supreme Politburo Standing Committee, is without precedent and members of the elite panel have long been considered politically untouchable.
President Xi Jinping secured party elders' consent for the highly sensitive probe in August during the secretive annual policy planning conclave at the Beidaihe resort.
Zhang Ming , a political scientist at Renmin University, said authorities still appeared to be trying to gather evidence on Zhou and it was unclear when the findings would be announced.
"One possibility is that the authorities are having some difficulty in gathering proof that Zhou is directly and personally involved in the corruption as opposed to doing it through his family," Zhang said.
Ji, 47, has been close to Zhou since at least 1998, when Zhou led the Ministry of Land and Resources. Ji, a geologist, was Zhou's secretary and a researcher.
Zhou took Ji along when he became Sichuan party boss in 1999, making him deputy director of the general office of the provincial party committee.
When Zhou ascended to powerful post of public security minister in 2003, he made Ji his secretary and a deputy director of the ministry's general office. In July 2008, Ji was named deputy director of a ministerial group tasked with maintaining social stability, but moved back to the land ministry five months later.
Ji was elevated to become Hainan's deputy governor last year, after a stint as deputy party chief of the provincial capital Haikou .
Other former Zhou aides under investigation for corruption include Guo Yongxiang , a former deputy Sichuan governor, and Li Dongsheng , a former vice-minister of public security. Ji last appeared in public last Friday, when he attended a provincial disciplinary meeting chaired by Hainan party chief Luo Baoming .
The previous day, he had called for a crackdown against illegal building and for new regulations to be used to control property development.
Ji Wenlin, a former top aide of public security chief Zhou Yongkang. Photo: AFP
The corruption case against Ji Wenlin, a former top aide of retired security tsar Zhou Yongkang, is related to Ji’s role in state energy giant China National Petroleum Corporation, local media reported on Wednesday.
Ji, who was named vice-governor of the southern province of Hainan last year, had close ties with some of the disgraced senior officials of the influential CNPC, according to multiple sources quoted by the 20th Century Business Herald. At least seven of those officers were sacked amid the government’s campaign against corruption.
The CNPC was considered Zhou’s power base and for which he served as general manager in the mid-1990s.
The Communist Party’s top graft-busting agency announced on Wednesday night that Ji had been placed under investigation for “severely breaching party disciplines”. Ji’s name has been removed from the Hainan provincial official list on its website.
Ji – whose career cuts a path through Zhou’s power bases including Sichuan province, the domestic security bureau, and the state oil sector – is the latest Zhou associate to be investigated for “serious disciplinary violations” by the anti-graft watchdog.
Among the oil executives, Ji was especially close to the former deputy general manager of CNPC, Li Hualin, who was placed under investigation last August together with two other senior officials for serious disciplinary violations, the newspaper said.
Zhou Yongkang. Photo: Bloomberg
In February 2011, shortly after Ji was named Haikou city’s mayor, he signed a 250 million yuan (HK$318 million) contract with Li, who was then the head of CNPC subsidiary Kunlun Energy, to develop green transportation, according to the company’s website.
Ji and Li both attended the signing ceremony and delivered speeches.
An anonymous source also told the Herald on Wednesday that Ji secured the contract after his meeting in Beijing with former CNPC chairman Jiang Jiemin earlier that year. Jiang, one of Zhou’s former aides, was investigated for graft and removed from all his positions in the oil sector, including as overseer of the nation’s state-owned assets and companies.
According to the previous report, Haikou’s city government and Kunlun Energy went on to co-found a bus company. The municipal government also agreed to give full support to the energy company to set up 55 petrol stations in the city, and Kunlun would assist in establishing CNPC’s Haikou headquarters.
China Business Journal, a business newspaper run by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, found in its investigative project on Li last year that he had ties with Zhou Yongkang’s family.
The newspaper said Li used his personal connections from Southwest Petroleum University in Sichuan, his alma mater, to secure school admittance for Zhou’s son, Zhou Bin, despite the younger Zhou’s poor performance in the entrance exam. Zhou Bin is also facing a graft probe.
CNPC, the mainland's largest oil producer, strikes billions of US dollars worth of deals a year, and holds interests in oil fields all over the world, including central Asia and the Middle East.
