China's former security chief Zhou Yongkang has been sentenced to life in prison, the state news agency Xinhua reported. He is the most senior member of the Communist Party yet to be punished in a wide-ranging corruption crackdown.
Footage on Chinese broadcaster CCTV from the closed- door trial on May 22nd showed Mr Zhou looking almost unrecognisable, his hair totally white and his famously fierce expression now looking bewildered and bowed.
“Zhou Yongkang was sentenced to life imprisonment for accepting bribes, abusing power and deliberately disclosing state secrets, with his political rights deprived for life and personal assets confiscated,” Xinhua reported.
The sentencing came as a major surprise. Supreme court president Zhou Qiang had said earlier that Mr Zhou’s trial would be open “in accordance with the law”, although as state secrets were involved it was always unlikely the trial would have especially open.
One intriguing development said Mr Zhou had passed on five “top-secret documents” to Cao Yongzheng, who is described in reports as a fortune teller and martial-arts practitioner.
Tigers and flies
He is the highest-profile target yet in President Xi Jinping’s campaign to root out corruption in
China
, whether it involves massive wealth accumulated by the powerful “tigers” of the elite or backhanders given to the “flies” at the bottom of the Communist Party.
The party's official organ, the People's Daily, applauded the conviction in an editorial."There are no privileged members in front of Communist Party of China discipline. There is no privileged citizen in front of the law. No matter how much power one holds or how high one's position, one will surely be severely punished for violating party discipline and state laws," it said.
The sentence was imposed at the Tianjin Municipal No 1 Intermediate People’s Court yesterday.
Mr Zhou (72) was formerly a member of the standing committee of the politburo of the Communist Party, the apogee of power in China. He retired in December 2012, shortly after Mr Xi came to power.
“I acknowledge that the facts of my crimes have caused great damage to the party’s work,” he said in the courtroom.
Profit
from illegal business He said
he and a group of acquaintances had received more than 2.1 billion yuan (€341 million) in profit from various illegal business activities, Xinhua reported. Mr Zhou was convicted of taking bribes of about 130 million yuan (€18.5 million). He said he would not appeal and the court will confiscate his personal property.
He was arrested and expelled from the party last December, and accused of a range of crimes ranging from taking bribes to having mistresses to leaking state secrets.
Among other things, he was charged with leaking state secrets to his fortune teller.
Since Mr Xi made his pledge back in November 2012, tens of thousands of officials have been arrested, including Bo Xilai, the former party boss in Dalian and Chongqing, who is serving a life sentence for corruption and abuse of power, while his wife Gu Kailai is in jail for murder.
While Mr Bo was a major figure, in terms of party structure, Mr Zhou is the highest-ranking Chinese official to be sentenced in court since the infamous Gang of Four, which also included chairman Mao Zedong’s widow Jiang Qing, were tried for fomenting the Cultural Revolution.
Part of the charge sheet against Mr Zhou said he leaked party and national secrets.
Other senior figures are also expected to fall foul of the anti-corruption campaign, including Ling Jihua, a close ally of former president Hu Jintao, whose son died in a Ferrari crash in 2012.
