China official who received $325m worth of bribes sentenced to death
A court in eastern China has sentenced a former city official to death for accepting more than 2.2 billion yuan ($325 million; £243 million) in bribes over 30 years.
Yang Youlin, who held various positions in the city of Nanjing from 1993 to 2023, was also convicted of embezzlement, abuse of power and money laundering, and his ill-gotten gains reached one of the highest rates in recent years.
State media said the 69-year-old exploited his role to help others secure engineering contracts, land transfers and financing in exchange for money and valuables.
Yang was investigated as part of President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption crackdown that has slashed military ranks and top banking, among other sectors.
A court in the city of Changzhou said on Monday that Yang, who spent most of his career working on economic and technological development in Nanjing, committed crimes of an “extremely serious nature” and “caused extraordinarily heavy losses to the interests of the state and the people.”
President Xi has launched waves of anti-corruption efforts since coming to power, which critics say has also been used as a tool to purge political rivals.
But death sentences for white-collar crimes remain rare, but are occasionally imposed, usually when cases involve large sums of money, exceeding 1 billion yuan.
For example, former finance chief Lai Xiaomin was executed in 2021 for accepting 1.8 billion yuan in bribes over a 10-year period.
Li Jianping, a former Inner Mongolia official, was executed in 2024 for embezzlement and accepting bribes totaling more than 3 billion yuan.
In many other cases, courts imposed prison sentences or suspended death sentences that were commuted to life imprisonment after a certain period of time.
Courts have also reduced sentences in some cases where convicted people reported other criminals.
However, the Changzhou court said Yang had provided similar assistance to authorities, but his crimes were so “grave” that his assistance was “insufficient to warrant a lighter sentence.”
Yang admitted his guilt and “expressed regret in his final statement,” according to state media.
