Anti-graft campaign brings to light misdeeds of corrupt officials’ spouses

The recent downfall of Guo Zhenggang, deputy political commissar for the Zhejiang Military Area Command, has brought attention to his wife's business dealings as well as the role played by wives of disgraced officials in corruption scandals.

Guo, the son of Guo Boxiong, former vice chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) was placed under investigation by a military procuratorate in February for suspected "legal violations and criminal offenses," the PLA Daily newspaper reported.

Once a rising star in the military, Guo Zhenggang, 45, was promoted to his current post with the rank of major general in mid-January, Zhejiang Television reported.

After the news broke, Guo's wife, Wu Fangfang, a 45-year-old businesswoman based in Hangzhou, capital city of Zhejiang Province, also became the center of attention, with her standing accused of fraud, news portal caijing.com reported.

Behind every man

Wu reportedly owned an unfinished building that was supposed to house a hardware market on military-owned land in Hangzhou. During construction, Wu's company began to sell commercial space in the mall, collecting more than 500 million yuan from some 2,000 investors and would-be tenants. The 300,000-square-meter mall was due for completion in 2011 but never finished.

A business partner of Wu, said the project was stalled after Wu withdrew her investment, The Beijing News reported.

Over the past year, the 2,000 tenants negotiated with Wu dozens of times in hope of retrieving their money, to no avail. In January, about 100 angry shop owners and creditors protested outside the headquarters of the Zhejiang Military Area Command in Hangzhou demanding their money back, caijing.com reported.

Another protest broke out on March 15, when 300-plus shop owners confronted Wu. The meeting, however, ended abruptly after Wu delivered a brief statement and then disappeared from the scene.

Before her unsuccessful investment in the hardware market, Wu operated a fabric wholesale market on a small plot of land in Zhejiang in 2007, where she collected 800 million yuan selling leases for market space to tenants.

Wu used the money to rent more land to build a wholesale metal market, collecting a further 520 million yuan in rent.

"What Wu has been doing are not real businesses, but manipulating the properties and land she obtained to amass more money," a businessman familiar with Wu's investments said, as quoted the Beijing News.

Investigations into "big tigers", or high-level corrupt officials targeted in the ongoing graft fight, have found a considerable number of cases where "tiger wives" play a vital role in their husbands' corruption.

In some cases, the spouses are used as the officials' intermediary to hide illicit funds or deals, though in many instances the woman is just as corrupt as the official or worse, using their husbands' position to amass wealth or get access to business opportunities.

Wu married Guo in December 2012, about a year after she ended a 21-year marriage with her ex-husband.

While still married to her previous husband, a judge, Wu had an affair with her driver who was 20 years her junior, reported Hong Kong-based Phoenix Weekly. Wu allegedly ended the relationship in order to approach Guo.

Before their marriage, Guo's bright future was "nearly ruined by Wu when she broke into Guo's office with a baby bump" after the two met at a social gathering and had one-night stand, the weekly cited a retired official at Guo's department as saying.

To save his career, Guo ended his first marriage and married Wu. About three months later on March 2, the PLA announced that Guo was one of 14 senior officers being probed over corruption allegations.

"Wu was a nameless businesswoman - she seldom made big money before marrying Guo," Phoenix Weekly cited a former partner as saying. "But after she married Guo, more investors trusted her, which helped her attract more capital. But she still used her old tactics of promising high returns without any serious accounting."

Wu's business partner said Wu started running small businesses in the 1990s, and had not been very successful until she managed to build connections with her savvy social skills.

Desperate housewives

The most high-profile wife of a fallen official since the sweeping graft campaign began in early 2013 is Gu Kailai, the spouse of former Chongqing Party chief Bo Xilai. Gu, a former lawyer and businesswoman, was convicted of using her husband's position and connections to make millions of dollars through business and property investment. She was handed a suspended death sentence for the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood over conflicting business interests.

Another prominent spouse is Gu Liping, the wife of Ling Jihua, former head of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee. Gu was probed for allegedly using her husband's political influence to amass illicit wealth through her charitable organizations, China Economic Weekly reported. Reports of Gu Liping's misdeeds began surfacing around the time her husband was detained by authorities for "serious discipline violations" at the end of last year.

In another case, Yu Lifang, wife of Su Rong, former vice chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference's National Committee, accepted bribes from officials who want to maintain "good relationships" with Su, cnweekly.cn reported on March 13. Yu also took advantage of Su's power to involve herself in real estate, construction project and mineral resource projects, according to the report. Su, who has been expelled from the Party, is being investigated by procurators.

Similar cases of family involvement in corrupt officials' cases, dubbed "family corruption" by the media, have emerged during China's ongoing anti-graft drive. Inspection teams sent by China's top disciplinary watchdog found family corruption in regions, with officials' spouses and families taking advantage of officials' power to reap personal benefits. To curb the problem, governments have taken a number of steps.