China’s former Minister of Justice sentenced to de@th for taking bribes worth $16million

A former justice minister, Fu Zhenghua has been sentenced to death for corruption involving $16 million, with a two-year reprieve, by a court in China.

According to AAnews, 67-year-old Fu was found guilty by the Intermediate People’s Court of Changchun in northeast China’s Jilin province. The death sentence can be commuted after two years in prison, the court ruling stated.

Fu who served as justice minister between March 2018 and April 2020 was accused of “taking advantage” of his position between 2005 and 2021, including accepting bribes totalling more than 117 million yuan (about $16.76 million) and “bending the law for personal gains.” According to the report, the court stripped Fu of his political rights for life and confiscated all of his personal property.

“After the two-year reprieve for his death sentence, Fu’s sentence can be commuted to life in prison in accordance with the law, but no further reduction or parole shall be given to him,” according to the court ruling, as quoted by the Chinese public broadcaster CGTN.

The court found that Fu had concealed evidence involving a suspected serious crime committed by his brother Fu Weihua while serving as head of the Beijing public security bureau between 2014 and 2015. “This concealment allowed Fu Weihua to avoid prosecution for a long time,” the court stated in its verdict.

“The sum of bribes Fu had taken was huge, and he committed particularly serious crimes, which caused a heavy loss to the interests of the state and people and also had a particularly bad social impact,” it added. However, court noted that Fu who was assigned to the Committee on Social and Legal Affairs of the National Committee of the CPPCC after having served as justice minister last year, received a “lenient sentence” as he “confessed to all his crimes and pled guilty during the investigation, provided clues for important cases, and had been cooperative in returning his illegal gains.”