BEIJING (AP) – The former head of a Chinese state-owned asset management company was executed on Friday on charges of taking bribes in an exceptionally severe penalty for a recent corruption case.
Lai Xiaomin of China Huarong Asset Management Co. was among the thousands of employees involved in a long anti-bribery campaign led by President Xi Jinping. Others, including the former Chinese insurance regulator, were sentenced to prison.
Lai, 58, was sentenced to death by a court in Tianjin, east of Beijing, the government announced.
The Tianjin Second Intermediate People’s Court ruled in January that the death was justified because Lai accepted “especially huge” bribes to make investments, offer construction contracts, help with promotions and provide other favors.
Lai applied for or received 1.8 billion yuan ($ 260 million) over a decade, the court said. He said a bribe exceeded 600 million yuan ($ 93 million). He was also convicted of embezzling more than 25 million yuan ($ 4 million) and starting a second family while still married to his first wife.
Lai “has endangered national financial security and financial stability,” said a comment on the state TV website.
The death penalty “was his own responsibility, and he deserved it,” said the comment.
Most death sentences imposed by Chinese courts are suspended for two years and are generally commuted to life. Death penalties with no chance of extension are rare.
Huarong is one of four entities created in the 1990s to buy bad loans from public banks. They have expanded into banks, insurance, real estate finance and other fields.
Lai was put under investigation by the ruling Communist Party’s anti-corruption body in 2018 and expelled from the party the same year.
Lai was also accused of wasting public money, organizing banquets illegally, engaging in sex with several women and taking bribes, the anti-corruption agency said in 2018.
Investigators seized hundreds of millions of yuan (tens of millions of dollars) in cash from Lai’s properties, Chinese magazine Caixin reported in 2018.