Beijing Prepares for Corruption Trial

The biggest corruption case in modern Chinese history, involving up to $2.2 billion in funds misappropriated from the Beijing municipal government, is set to go to trial later this year, according to officials here.

Beijing Supreme People’s Court President Sheng Liangang said this week that charges have been prepared against 18 former members of the Beijing city government accused of pocketing bribes and skimming development funds in the booming Chinese capital.

At the center of the massive corruption scandal is former Beijing Communist Party Secretary and Politburo member Chen Xitong, who resigned from his posts last April. However, prosecutors did not say whether Chen, 65, the most senior Communist Party official ever to fall in a corruption case, would be put on trial.

The corruption case came to the public’s attention when Beijing Deputy Mayor Wang Baosen committed suicide last spring in the outskirts of the capital, reportedly after he learned he was under investigation for corruption. Wang was a close associate of Chen.

But the investigation was given another nudge last month when a surprising number of deputies attending the National People’s Congress, China’s parliament, angrily voted their disapproval of a report detailing anti-corruption actions by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the country’s main investigative branch.

Normally, the National People’s Congress is a rubber-stamp body. However, more than 700 of the 1,883 members voted for stronger efforts against corruption. In the lobbies of the Great Hall of the People, members grumbled that the powerful former Beijing party leader and his associates were being protected by the senior leadership.

This apparently spurred Chinese President and Communist Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin to enlarge the Beijing corruption probe. Jiang, who is in line to replace 91-year-old Deng Xiaoping as China’s top leader, has made fighting corruption a key theme of his leadership.

Initially, prosecutors announced that the amount of money involved in the Beijing scandal totaled $37 million. But in a report published this week in the Beijing Daily, the official newspaper of the municipal Communist Party committee, Beijing government official Zhang Jianmin placed the total missing funds at 18.3 billion yuan--$2.2 billion.

“Chen Xitong and Wang Baosen sabotaged fiscal discipline,” the newspaper reported. “They concealed huge amounts of funds, some of which they lent out or purposely pocketed and squandered, causing great losses.”

Several development projects begun under Chen’s leadership have been frozen during the yearlong investigation. In the corner of Ritan Park in eastern Beijing, Chen, an avid tennis player, hoped to build a private sports club.

Land in one of Beijing’s most famous parks, where emperors once came to offer prayers, was partially cleared for the sports complex. But soon after Chen was forced to resign work halted, and the site remains untouched.

One of those arrested was Chen’s son, Chen Xiaotong, notorious as one of China’s most powerful red princelings--privileged sons of powerful officials.