The former director of a Chinese government-run asset management company was executed Friday after a court sentenced him to death in a bribery involving $276 million and bigamy, multiple reports said Saturday.
Lai Xiaomin of China Huarong Asset Management Co., was one of thousands of high-ranking executives snared in a long-running anti-corruption campaign spearheaded by President Xi Jinping. Other key officials, including China's former insurance regulator, have been sent to jail.
The Second Municipal Intermediate People's Court of Tianjin earlier in its decision said that between 2008 and 2018, Lai took undue advantage of his various positions in the former China Banking Regulatory Commission and Huarong, among others, to assist certain groups and people with project contracting, financing, business operations, and job promotions.
"The amount of bribes that Lai Xiaomin took was extremely large, the crime's circumstances were particularly serious, and the social impact was severe," state broadcaster CCTV quoted the Chinese Supreme People's Court, which evaluated and approved the death sentence, as saying.
While Lai remained married, he was cohabitated with another woman and fathered children, the court said. He met with his close relatives prior to the execution by the Tianjin court on orders of CSPC, the newspaper said.
"The bribed amount was the biggest since the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949," the judge said.
Most of the nearly 1.8 billion yuan has been recovered, with some of the money to be handed over to the Chinese state treasury and others to relevant agencies. The court will continue to recover the balance of the bribes, CCTV said.
Lai's crimes have caused "a great loss" to the interests of the Chinese government and the people, the ruling said. Given the circumstances of his crimes, the supreme court ruled that he did not deserve a lenient sentence.
Last week, Xi said corruption remained the biggest risk for ruling the Communist Party China. "People feel deeply that in times of crisis, the strong leadership of the Party and the authority of the CPC Central Committee are what they can always count on," the President said in remarks quoted by News18.
Most death sentences carried out by Chinese courts are put on hold for two years and are usually commuted to life. The capital punishment without the chance of a reprieve are very uncommon.
Rights group Amnesty International estimates that China is the country in the world with the most number of executions, with thousands given the death penalty each year.
