SW China court upholds death sentence for corrupt SOE boss

A southwest China court has upheld the death sentence for a former state-owned enterprise (SOE) boss convicted of graft and embezzlement totaling over 30 million yuan (4.72 million U.S. dollars), court officials said Friday.

Wang Guanchao, former board chairman of Beijing Triple Nine Automobile Industrial Co., Ltd, and others were found to have pocketed about 26.3 million yuan from the restructuring of the SOE, and Wang embezzled another 4 million yuan in public funds for his personal business.

Wang was given a death sentence with a two-year reprieve by the Intermediate People's Court of Chongqing in November 2009. He appealed the sentence, but the Higher People's Court of Chongqing upheld the ruling.

Wang's case underscored the alarming situation of corruption in SOEs, especially during the restructuring process, a time when supervision is often lax, prosecutors with the case said.

They said Wang's embezzlement scheme was a serious undertaking, and he pledged to steal state funds long ago and had meticulously planned every step of the process.

Prosecutors even found a diary of Wang's that included his thoughts on embezzlement.

"I will use the state funds to set up more companies. If the businesses are good, the profits are mine; if the businesses are bad, the state covers my loss. So many other [SOE bosses] have done that," he wrote.


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