Former Vice Mayor Gets 15-Year Prison TermDu Baocheng, former vice mayor of Nanning, capital of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, was sentenced to 15 years in jail Friday after he was convicted for accepting bribes.The Intermediate People's Court of Nanning handed down the verdict in a first-instance trial. According to the ruling, Du has also been stripped of his political rights for three years and was fined 10,000 yuan (about US$1,204). Du, 55, was a delegate to the 10th People's Congress of Nanning. He is the former chairman of the board of Strong Holdings Ltd. of Guangxi and a legal representative of Bagui Industrial Co., Ltd. Court investigations show that from 1995 to 1999, Du took the advantage of his post to help Li Ping, a Hong Kong resident and mistress of Cheng Kejie, former vice chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee who was sentenced to death, to transfer land plots. Du took 600,000 yuan (about 72,289) in kickbacks from Li on three separate occasions. In October 1997, Du embezzled one million yuan (about US$120,482) from the Bagui Construction Company attached to Strong Holdings Ltd. to obtain a one-way passport for his then pregnant wife to go to Hong Kong to have the baby. Du was detained by local police on January 18, 2000, on suspicion of taking bribes and embezzling public money. |
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