Zhou Yongkang, Former Security Chief in China, Faces Corruption Trial
 

HONG KONG — The former head of China’s law-and-order apparatus, Zhou Yongkang, will stand trial on charges of bribery, abusing power and disclosing state secrets, the country’s top prosecution office announced on Friday, making Mr. Zhou the highest-ranked Communist Party official to be indicted on graft charges.

The statement from the prosecution office, which oversees major corruption inquiries, indicated that Mr. Zhou had little hope of clemency, noting that his misdeeds were “particularly grave.”

Mr. Zhou is the most powerful figure yet to have been singled out by President Xi Jinping’s campaign to eradicate corruption. The prosecution office said his crimes spanned much of his career as a party official, from his time as an oil executive to his five-year tenure on the Politburo Standing Committee, when he wielded immense power through overseeing the courts, the police, domestic security forces and the state intelligence apparatus.


Zhou Yongkang in 2012. He is the first member of the Politburo Standing Committee, retired or active, to face a criminal corruption inquiry.

China Arrests Ex-Chief of Domestic Security in Graft CaseDEC. 5, 2014


The announcement Friday did not give a date for Mr. Zhou’s trial, which will be in Tianjin, a northern port city near Beijing.

Several members of Zhou Yongkang’s family have made investments in companies with ties to the China National Petroleum Corp., the state oil company formerly run by Mr. Zhou.

Mr. Zhou, 72, retired from office in November 2012, at the same party congress that appointed Mr. Xi as the top leader. In the months that followed, party investigators started corruption inquiries into officials who had worked under Mr. Zhou in the nation’s biggest oil and gas conglomerate, the China National Petroleum Corporation; in Sichuan Province in China’s southwest; and in the country’s police and state intelligence services. Like many of those fallen officials, Mr. Zhou is accused of bribetaking and illicit deals.

Mr. Zhou “took advantage of his positions to seek gain for others, illegally accepted massive amounts of wealth from others, abused his powers, leading to major losses to public assets and to the interests of the state and people,” the office said.

But much of the interest in the trial will probably focus on the allegation that Mr. Zhou illegally disclosed state secrets. Mr. Zhou “violated the stipulations of the State Secrets Law and deliberately disclosed state secrets, and the circumstances were particularly serious,” the prosecution office said, without providing details.

From 2007, Mr. Zhou held a seat on the Politburo Standing Committee, the party’s top decision-making body, and at the same time ran a committee overseeing the police and domestic security forces, as well as courts, prosecutors and prisons. The secrets charge has fed speculation that Mr. Zhou used his power over the police and the Ministry of State Security to engage in intrigue among members of the party elite.

In March, the Supreme People’s Court, China’s highest court, said in a report on judicial work that Mr. Zhou and Bo Xilai — a disgraced former Politburo member who was tried and convicted in 2013 — had both “trampled on rule of law, sabotaged party unity and engaged in nonorganization political activities.” The wording suggested that Mr. Zhou and Mr. Bo had, together or separately, engaged in political conspiracy.

Last July, the Communist Party announced that it was investigating Mr. Zhou, making him the first member, sitting or retired, of the Politburo Standing Committee to face formal investigation on corruption allegations. He was arrested in December.

Party investigators and prosecutors have not provided details of the accusations against Mr. Zhou. But an investigation by The New York Times found that his relatives had accumulated assets worth at least 1 billion renminbi, or about $160 million.

China’s courts are closely controlled by the Communist Party, and Mr. Zhou has no realistic chance of escaping conviction and a long prison sentence. In March, Zhou Qiang, the president of the Supreme People’s Court, said Mr. Zhou’s trial would be “open in accordance with the law.”

In practice, however, trials of fallen senior Chinese officials have usually been tightly choreographed rituals of denunciation and repentance. But Mr. Bo, the former Politburo member who was tried in August 2013, used the courtroom to mount a combative defense against charges of accepting bribes and abusing power. The announcement about Mr. Zhou’s trial did not say whether he accepted the charges or would fight them.

Bron: www.nytimes.com

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Mening: Corruptie is al jaar en dag datgene waarmee de wereld geneigd is China te bestempelen. Niet geheel onterecht, China scoort al een poos bijster pover op de globale ranking inzake corruptie.

De ambiguïteit van de opvattingen omtrent het nepotisme is dan ook wel verbijsterend. Het Chinees volk uit frequent hun bezorgdheden over de corruptie die gaande is in de hogere kringen van hun land maar tegelijkertijd wordt corruptie door velen zowel maatschappelijk alsook sociaal geaccepteerd. Deze acceptatie uit zich in het - in de westerse media opkomende - begrip ' guanxi. Om de taalleemte min of meer op te vullen, houdt dit woord in dat een persoon een invloedrijk sociaal netwerk heeft en dit ook weet in te zetten. Ondanks dit woord eerder een negatieve connotatie in onze oren teweeg brengt, is dit zeker en vast niet bij iedereen in China.

Corruptie bestrijden wordt dan ook aanzienlijk moeilijker als je eerst de maatschappelijke opvattingen omtrent het ethisch onrecht ervan moet aanduiden aan de bevolking zelf. De huidige president van de CCP zet zich echter enkele jaren al ostentatief in inzake corruptiebestrijding. Ik ben zelf vaak nogal sceptisch bij zulke acties van de CCP, ze zijn immers geneigd corruptie te bestrijden zolang het henzelf niet treft, maar ik vermoed dat het stappen zijn in de goede richting.