The crimes of the former Chinese mayor who was just sentenced to death

The Jixi City Court in Heilongjiang Province, China on December 23 sentenced former Hegang City Mayor Liang Chengjun to death for corruption.

According to China Daily, defendant Liang Chengjun was sentenced to death but had his sentence suspended for two years. He was also convicted of bribery and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The indictment released by the Jixi City Procuratorate shows that during his time working from 2006 to 2017, the defendant was successively appointed to various positions, including Secretary of the Hegang City Discipline Inspection Commission, Deputy Secretary of the Municipal Party Committee and Mayor of Hegang, and Deputy Secretary of the Heilongjiang Provincial Party Committee.

Luong Thanh Quan when he was still in office. Photo: QQ

During his tenure as Deputy Secretary of the Municipal Party Committee and Mayor of Hegang from 2013 to 2016, Liang and several other corrupt officials in the city embezzled more than 101 million yuan (RMB) in public funds. At the same time, Liang also took advantage of his power to support a number of businesses or individuals in many economic projects and business contracts in Hegang, and then received more than 6.6 million RMB from these individuals and organizations.

During the period from 2015 to 2016, Liang continued to use his influence to illegally lend money from public funds to businesses, and continued to cause a loss of more than 60 million yuan in public funds.

According to the Global Times, after Liang was "fallen from power" in late 2017, investigators from the Chinese Anti-Corruption Agency searched his home and discovered nearly 27 million yuan of "unknown origin" there. Liang later confessed that he had obtained all of the money through bribery from many lower-level officials, businesses and embezzlement of public funds.

The Global Times quoted a statement from the Jixi City Procuratorate as saying that Liang Chengjun had committed many crimes, including “severe degradation in political ideology and serious violation of organizational discipline; embezzlement of public funds; a lavish and hedonistic lifestyle and long-term illicit relationships with many women; taking advantage of his position to appoint many people to public agencies, thereby collecting illegal money…”.