A former chairwoman of the Heilongjiang Provincial Committee of the
Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and
senior provincial Communist Party of China (CPC) official was given
a two-year suspended death sentence on Thursday for taking bribes.
Beijing No.1 Intermediate People's Court passed its verdict
after finding that Han Guizhi had accepted 7.02 million yuan
(US$875,000) in bribes from many officials between 1993 and 2003,
all of which it said has since been recovered.
One of those who was found to have bribed her was Ma De, the
former Suihua City CPC secretary who received the same sentence in
July for taking bribes worth 6 million yuan (US$740,000) from 1992
to 2002.
The court said Han took advantage of her posts as provincial
deputy CPC secretary and as vice-director and later director of the
provincial CPC committee's Organization Department to promote bribe
givers.
Born in 1943, Han was appointed a standing committee member and
Organization Department director of the Heilongjiang provincial CPC
committee in 1996. She became deputy CPC secretary of Heilongjiang
in 1997.
Han was given the top CPPCC post in 2002 and reselected the
following year.
She was removed from her posts in June last year, and expelled
from the CPC five months later.
In April, her case was transferred from Heilongjiang to
Beijing.
(Xinhua News Agency, China Daily December 16, 2005)
