Corruption: Former Head of China State Asset Firm Sentenced to Death

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The former head of state-owned China Huarong Asset Management Co. Ltd., Lai Xiaomin was on Tuesday sentenced to death for bribe taking in one of the harshest punishments for economic crimes in recent years.58-year-old Xiaomin, was also found guilty by the Second Intermediate People’s Court of Tianjin of lesser charges including corruption and bigamyLai Xiaomin, was the chairman of China Huarong Asset Management Co. from 2012 to 2018 when he was fired for graft. He was accused by a local Chinese court in the northern city of Tianjin of taking bribes totaling a record high of more than 1.79 billion yuan, equivalent to $277millionLai Xiaomin was considered especially corrupt, according to Chinese bankers and industry analysts, given that he was a senior party cadre committing crimes while working for the state-owned company as well as the nation’s banking regulator.His harsh sentence comes as Beijing seeks to reinvigorate its tough stance on the financial sector after a year focused mostly on boosting the domestic economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on global growth.

The court characterized him as being “lawless and extremely greedy,” with his actions “endangering the nation’s financial security and financial stability.”

In its ruling, the Tianjin court cited the “especially enormous” size of the bribes Lai accepted, saying they exceeded 600 million yuan ($93 million) in one instance.

In total, it said Lai collected or sought to collect 1.79 billion yuan (US$260 million) over a decade in exchange for abusing his position to make investments, offer construction contracts, help with promotions and provide other favors.

He was also convicted of embezzling more than 25 million yuan (almost $4 million) in state assets and starting a second family while still married to his first wife.

Although Lai provided useful details about malfeasance by his subordinates, the seriousness of his bribe taking and “degree of harm caused to society” were not enough to win him leniency, the court said in its ruling.

“Lai Xiaomin is lawless and greedy in the extreme. His crimes are extremely serious and must be punished severely under law”, the ruling said.

By Chinese law, officials can face the death penalty, either by firing squad or lethal injection, for bribery totaling as little as three million yuan. Still, Chinese courts seldom resort to the death penalty for corruption, and accounts of financial bribery in China frequently total in the tens of millions of yuan.

Huarong is one of four entities created in the 1990s to buy nonperforming loans from banks, helping to revive the state-owned finance industry. Such asset management companies expanded into banking, insurance, real estate finance and other fields.

Lai Xiaomin was placed under investigation by the ruling Communist Party’s corruption watchdog in 2018 and expelled from the party later the same year.

He was accused of squandering public money, illegally organizing banquets, engaging in sexual dealings with multiple women and taking bribes, the anti-corruption agency said in 2018.

Investigators seized hundreds of millions of yuan (tens of millions of dollars) in cash from Lai’s properties, the Chinese business news magazine Caixin reported in 2018.

Lai Xiaomin was one of hundreds of officials at government agencies, state companies and the military who have been detained in an anti-corruption crackdown launched in 2012.

The former head of regional Hengfeng Bank in eastern Shandong province was sentenced to death last year for accumulating illegal gains amounting to more than 10 billion yuan, but the sentence came with a two-year reprieve, meaning it will likely be converted to life imprisonment.

Other senior officials snared in the crackdown include a former head of China’s insurance regulator