Bai Tianhui Photo: CCTV

A court in North China’s Tianjin Municipality sentenced Bai Tianhui, former general manager of China Huarong International Holdings Limited, to death on Tuesday and ordered that all his personal property should be confiscated for accepting bribes worth of 1.1 billion yuan ($152 million), an offense which had caused severely bad social impact and substantial losses to the country’s interests. 

The Tianjin No.2 Intermediate People’s Court announced the first trial verdict that Bai, 53, was sentenced to death for the crime of accepting huge amount of bribes, and has been deprived of political rights for life. Apart from confiscating all his personal property, the bribery proceeds and their yields will also be confiscated and turned over to the state treasury, with any shortfall to be recovered, the China Central Television reported on Tuesday. 

According to the court, Bai took advantage of his management positions of China Huarong International Holdings Limited between 2014 and 2018, to offer favorable treatment to related entities in matters including project acquisitions and corporate financing, illegally accepting bribes of a total equivalent to more than 1.108 billion yuan.

The court ruled that the value of Bai’s bribery crime was extremely large and the circumstances of the crime were particularly serious. The case has caused extremely bad social impact and caused extremely heavy damage to the interests of the country and the people. Since Bai’s offence was extremely severe, he should be sentenced to death in accordance with the laws. 

Besides, although Bai exposed significant criminal behaviors of others and provided important clues for solving other cases, which were verified to be true, demonstrating major meritorious performance, however, it is insufficient for these actions to warrant a lenient punishment considering the facts, nature and circumstances of his crime, as well as the degree of harm to society. 

In January of 2019, Bai’s bribery case was handed to the second branch of Tianjin People’s Procuratorate for review and prosecution and the procuratorate made a decision to arrest Bai in accordance with the laws. 

The state-owned Huarong has been a major target of China’s years-long graft crackdown, with its former chairman Lai Xiaomin executed in January of 2021 for accepting or soliciting money and assets worth nearly 1.79 billion yuan and taking advantage of his positions to embezzle public funds of more than 25.13 million yuan. 

Lai’s case with embezzlement, bribery and bigamy crimes involved was the first case since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC)where a person convicted of embezzlement and bribery was sentenced to death. 

On January 13, 2020, the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, China’s top anti-graft watchdog, released on its official website a TV documentary which revealed the details of the extremely bad impact on the financial sector in Lai’s case and the exceedingly painful lessons drawn from the case. Bai also appears in the documentary. 

Global Times