[ad_1]
Former Chinese investigator against vaccinations, who worked closely with Vice President Wang Qishan, will be tried for admitting “very large” bribes, according to the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office.
The prosecutor said Dong Hong will be tried in Qingdao, eastern Shandong Province, for alleged crimes committed as a guardian of grafts against the Communist Party, as well as in Beijing municipal and Hainan provincial governments.
Dong was accused of “seeking benefits” while working as the party’s chief central inspector of the Discipline Inspection Commission, which Wang headed from 2012 to 2017 before becoming vice president in 2018.
Wang was highly esteemed financial technocrat President Xi Jinping before the CCDI got an incredibly strong message. While in the CCD, he led an ambitious anti-corruption campaign that toppled hundreds of parties in the country’s largest state-owned enterprises and top government officials, military and executives.
In January, Xi said corruption was “the biggest risk to the party’s government.” Many analysts, however, have said the campaign has also been used to intimidate people who might run counter to Xi’s intentions to start a third term in office next year. Xi was controversially abolished term limits for the presidency in 2018.
He served as anti-corruption tsar for a five-year term as Wang’s second most powerful official in China, and was expected to have an impact on U.S. relations and other important policy areas as vice president. However, his public appearances have mostly been limited since he left CCDI ceremonial events with foreign senior officials.
“Everyone thought that Wang Qishan would have a big impact on the vice presidency but the truth was that he wasn’t given a big portfolio,” said Willy Lam, a Chinese expert at the University of Hong Kong in Hong Kong.
The prosecution also accused Dong of admitting bribery and other crimes when he held senior positions in the Beijing municipal government and the southern province of Hainan, where he was deputy secretary general of the provincial party committee.
While the prosecutor did not say what year Dong worked in Beijing and Hainan, Chinese media reported that he was Wang’s main assistant in both places. Wang Hainan was the party’s chief official from 2002 to 2003, before being mayor of Beijing for the 2008 Summer Olympics held in the Chinese capital.
Dong was first accused of “serious violations” of party rules – a common euphemism for corruption – in October and expelled from the Communist Party in October. At the time of his expulsion, the Xinhua News Agency official said Donge had “lost his ideals and was disloyal and unfair to the party.”
It is rare to accuse members of major Chinese leaders of grafting. Ling Jihua, an aide to former President Hu Jintao, was a victim of Xi and Wang’s anti-corruption campaign.
Ling was charged with corruption in December 2014 and sentenced to two years in prison.
[ad_2]
Source link
