What’s new: A former party chief of Southwest China’s Guizhou province has pleaded guilty to accepting over $113 million in bribes, one day after an ex-deputy governor received a suspended death sentence for bribery.
Sun Zhigang was accused of taking advantage of positions he held in Guizhou, Anhui and Hubei provinces to help others get project contracts, acquire stock and develop real estate, according to a Wednesday statement from Tianjin No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court.
In exchange, Sun received money and assets worth more than 813 million yuan ($113.6 million), prosecutors said at Sun’s trial on Wednesday, according to the statement.
The court did not disclose when Sun will be sentenced.
What’s more: Corruption investigators announced they were looking into Sun in August 2023. The following February, he was expelled from the Communist Party.
Sun, a native of Central China’s Henan province, worked in neighboring Hubei province for more than two decades. He did a stint in the eastern province of Anhui before moving to Guizhou in 2015. Early in the 2010s, he chaired the State Council’s medical reform office, where he pushed to deepen health care reform.
On Tuesday, a former deputy governor of Guizhou, Li Zaiyong, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for accepting over 430 million yuan in bribes.
Contact reporter Kelly Wang (jingzhewang@caixin.com) and editor Michael Bellart (michaelbellart@caixin.com)
