In compliance with President Hu Jintao’s latest endeavours to crackdown on corruption, a former Chinese Supreme Court judge Huang Songyu has become the latest top official to be prosecuted for bribery.
Huang was convicted of taking approximately US$570,000 in bribes from 2005 to 2008 while he was deputy head of the Supreme People’s Court and of embezzling US$175,000 in 1997 while serving on a lower court in the south. He is the first official of his stature to be tried and convicted on such charges.
The matter was heard in the Langfang municipal intermediate court in the Hebei province. Huang was sentenced to life imprisonment and had all his property confiscated under the ruling.
The President, who described corruption as one of the greatest threats to the legitimacy of Communist Party rule, recently called the fight against corruption a “pressing task”, urging increased efforts to investigate embezzlement and corruption cases.
In 2008, Shanghai’s former powerful party chief, Cheng Liangyu, one the most senior official to fall foul of the law, was jailed for 18 years for his role in a pension fund scandal.
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