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Beijing:
A Chinese actual property tycoon and outspoken critic of President Xi Jinping was jailed for 18 years on Tuesday for corruption, bribery and embezzlement of public funds, a court docket assertion stated.
Ren Zhiqiang — as soon as among the many ruling Communist Party’s interior circle — disappeared from the general public eye in March, shortly after penning an essay that lambasted Xi’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.
His outspokenness had earned the previous chairman of state-owned property developer the Huayuan Group the nickname “Big Cannon”.
Tuesday’s verdict stated Ren embezzled nearly 50 million yuan ($7.Four million) of public funds and accepted bribes value 1.25 million yuan, in line with a press release from the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court.
It stated the 69-year-old “voluntarily and truthfully confessed all his crimes”, and wouldn’t enchantment the court docket’s resolution.
He was additionally fined 4.2 million yuan ($620,000).
Rights campaigners accuse Xi and the Communist Party of utilizing corruption fees to silence dissent.
Beijing has stepped up its crackdown on civil society since Xi took energy in 2012, tightening restrictions on freedom of speech and detaining lots of of activists and legal professionals.
Tuesday’s verdict claimed that Ren additionally “abused his power” in his position at Huayuan Group, which brought about greater than 116 million yuan of losses to the state-owned holding firm and greater than 53 million yuan value of property losses for the group.
Outspoken
The Communist Party’s disciplinary watchdog launched an investigation into Ren in April, and the trial opened at a Beijing court docket on September 11 with a handful of supporters exterior and a heavy police presence.
One supporter instructed AFP they backed Ren as a result of he “dares to speak the truth”.
Ren’s essay from earlier this yr, which criticised Xi, has been scrubbed from China’s web — which usually censors content material that challenges the authorities — however was shared on-line exterior China.
“This epidemic has revealed the fact that the Party and government officials only care about protecting their own interests, and the monarch only cares about protecting their interests and core position,” Ren wrote, with out naming Xi.
His influential weblog on the Twitter-like Weibo platform attracted hundreds of thousands of followers earlier than his account was closed by authorities in 2016 after he repeatedly referred to as for higher freedom of the press.
The son of a former vice-commerce minister and a Communist Party member for many years earlier than he was expelled in July, Ren was nicely linked with celebration elites.
He wrote in his memoir that he had been associates with vice-president and former anti-corruption chief Wang Qishan since they had been youngsters, when Wang was assigned by their college to mentor the youthful Ren.
He can be a controversial determine, notably over his defence of China’s hovering home costs — as soon as telling Chinese media that individuals who had been unwilling to put money into actual property earlier than the increase “now deserve to be poor”.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is revealed from a syndicated feed.)
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