{{China’s former railways minister Liu Zhijun has given a suspended death sentence for his role in a huge corruption scandal, state media reports.}}<\/p>\n
Liu was accused of using his position of influence to help about 11 business associates win promotions and project contracts and accepted 64.6 million Chinese yuan ($10.5 million) in unspecified bribes between 1986 and 2011.<\/p>\n
Under Chinese law the death penalty can be imposed for taking bribes exceeding 100,000 yuan ($ 16.000). The official Xinhua News Agency on Monday said the sentence was with a two-year reprieve by a court in Beijing. <\/p>\n
After two years, such sentences typically are commuted to life in prison if the inmate shows good behaviour.<\/p>\n
The court also ordered all of Liu’s personal property to be confiscated and issued a separate sentence of 10 years in prison for abuse of power.<\/p>\n
Liu’s lawyer Qian Lieyang said his client would likely not appeal the sentence.<\/p>\n
Once hailed as the “father” of China’s flagship high-speed rail network, Liu was sacked as railways minister in 2011 after eight years in the post,<\/p>\n
The country boasts the world’s longest high-speed network, but a high-speed crash killing some 40 people in 2011, sparked public criticism that authorities compromised safety in their rush to expand the network. <\/p>\n
The railways ministry was disbanded with its administrative functions handed to the transport ministry.<\/p>\n
{reuters}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{China’s former railways minister Liu Zhijun has given a suspended death sentence for his role in a huge corruption scandal, state media reports.}} Liu was accused of using his position of influence to help about 11 business associates win promotions and project contracts and accepted 64.6 million Chinese yuan ($10.5 million) in unspecified bribes between […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-8947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8947"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=8947"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=8947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}