China Sentences Ex-Legislator to Suspended Death for Corruption

A Chinese court sentenced a former senior legislator to a suspended death sentence for bribery, abuse of power and illegal reselling of land-use rights, Chinese authorities announced on Monday. 

A suspended death sentence gives the 65-year-old Liu Handong a two-year reprieve from execution, after which the sentence is automatically commuted to life imprisonment under Chinese law.

The long-serving official in East China’s Jiangsu province has also to pay a fine of six million Chinese yuan ($827,130) and will loose all of his assets as well as political rights. The seized property will be turned over to the state treasury.

Liu had accepted 245 million yuan ($33.8 million) in bribes from 1999 to 2023 in exchange for illegal favors. The court found that over the 24-year period, he abused his power as secretary and county magistrate of Jiangpu County, among other positions he had held, to unlawfully assist numerous individuals and entities transfer land-use rights.

In addition, between 2001 and 2017 in particular, the former official abused his position by facilitating illegal trading of land use rights by exempting beneficiaries from paying land value tax (VAT), among other related offenses, which "caused great losses to public property, national and people's interests."

The court also found Liu guilty of violating land management regulations in 2003 by illegally reselling land-use rights, helping co-conspirators make 54.16 million Chinese yuan ($7.5 million) in profits.

The court concluded that given Liu's crimes, "he should be sentenced to death," but gave the relatively more lenient sentence because he confessed, "took the initiative to explain some facts of taking bribes that the investigating agency had not yet grasped, pleaded guilty and repented, actively returned the stolen money and interest obtained from bribery, and the economic losses caused by the abuse of power crime can be fully recovered,” the statement said. 

The investigation began almost a year ago, when an arrest warrant was issued for Lui in March. He was indicted in August on charges of bribery, abuse of power and illegal trading of land use rights, and his first trial was held in October. 

Prior to his arrest, Lui was expelled from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China after the party’s disciplinary watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), launched an investigation into his “serious violations of discipline and law.”

The anti-corruption watchdog had accused him then of "violating the spirit of the eight regulations of the Central Committee, accepting gifts, cash gifts, and consumption cards in violation of regulations... colluding with illegal businessmen, and illegally accepting huge amounts of property... causing particularly serious losses to national interests."