What’s new: The former chairman and Communist Party chief of state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) has been expelled from the party for violations including accepting “huge” bribes and “long associating with political fraudsters and being exploited by them,” the country’s top graft buster said Wednesday.
Wang Yilin took bribes in exchange for helping others in areas including project contracting and business operations, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said in a statement. Wang also indulged his relatives’ use of his influence for personal gain and accepted several trips arranged by private business owners.
The CCDI did not specify how much Wang took in bribes, but his illegal gains have been confiscated, according to the statement. His case of alleged bribery has been transferred to prosecutors, the statement added.
The background: The CCDI announced an investigation into Wang in February, adding him to a growing list of executives at CNPC, the country’s largest oil and gas producer, which has been caught up in the country’s sweeping anti-graft dragnet on the energy sector.
Born in 1956 in East China’s Jiangsu province, Wang spent more than 20 years of his career in the energy-rich Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region in the northwest, working his way up from an exploration technician to senior positions at CNPC, including general manager of its subsidiary Xinjiang Oilfield.
Wang became chairman and party secretary of CNPC in 2015 and retired from those positions in January 2020.
Contact reporter Wang Xintong (xintongwang@caixin.com) and editor Jonathan Breen (jonathanbreen@caixin.com)
