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INTRO: China has sentenced a senior official to death
for taking bribes. If the sentence is upheld, Cheng
Kejie will be the highest-level Chinese Communist
Party official ever to be executed for corruption.
VOA's Leta Hong Fincher has this report from Beijing.
TEXT: China's state-run Xinhua news agency says the
senior official, Cheng Kejie, has been sentenced to
death for taking almost five million dollars in
bribes. Mr. Cheng was the former Vice Chairman of the
Standing Committee of China's parliament, the National
People's Congress. A Beijing court convicted him on
Monday of accepting the bribes with his mistress, when
he was chairman of the government of Guangxi province
in southwest China, an area teeming with smuggling and
drug activity.
Mr. Cheng has 10 days to appeal the sentence, but the
Xinhua news agency did not say if he would do so.
China's Communist Party has been leading a campaign
against corruption within its ranks for the last
several years. Mr. Cheng is the
highest level target since Beijing's top leader Chen
Xitong was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 1998.
The government hopes that prosecuting such powerful
officials will send a message to its people that no
one is above the law when it comes to corruption.
Cheng Kejie headed the government of Guangxi from 1990
to 1998, when he left the region to take up his
position in the National People's Congress.
The Chinese government first revealed that Mr. Cheng
was under investigation in March, when officials said
he would not be taking part in
the annual legislative session.(signed)
NEB/HK/LHF/JO
31-Jul-2000 00:50 AM EDT (31-Jul-2000 0450 UTC)
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Source: Voice of America |
