Chinese rail engineer handed death sentence for taking bribes
by The Associated Press
The lesson here? Play by the rules when doing business in China
BEIJING—A Chinese court has sentenced a former top railways official to death with a two-year reprieve for taking nearly $8 million in bribes.
The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate Court announced the verdict Friday against Zhang Shuguang, formerly the deputy chief engineer for the now-defunct Railway Ministry. The court also confiscated all of Zhang’s personal assets.
Suspended death sentences are usually commuted to life imprisonment in China.
Zhang’s conviction comes more than a year after the former railway minister, Liu Zhijun, was convicted of corruption and received a suspended death sentence as part of a broader anti-graft campaign under President Xi Jinping.
Liu and Zhang oversaw the rapid expansion of high-speed rail in China but also fostered a vast and deeply corrupt ministry empire that ran its own courts and police.
