BEIJING(National times)- A court in China said on Monday it had sentenced a former justice minister to life in prison after finding him guilty of accepting bribes totalling almost $20 million over more than a decade.Tang Yijun, 64, was China\u2019s justice minister from 2020 to 2023 and held various other positions during his career, including governor of Liaoning province and head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for the city of Ningbo. President Xi Jinping has waged a sweeping anti-corruption purge since coming to power in 2012, a crackdown that critics say allows him to eliminate potential political rivals. Tang abused \u201cthe advantages associated with the positions he successively held\u201d to \u201cobtain benefits for various entities and individuals\u201d between 2006 and 2022, the Xiamen Intermediate People\u2019s Court in eastern China said in a statement. In exchange for payment, the former official helped individuals and companies with initial public offerings, securing bank loans, acquiring land and other matters, the court said. Tang received a total of 137 million yuan ($19.7 million), it said. The \u201cparticularly high\u201d amount of bribes caused \u201cextremely serious damage to the interests of the state and the people\u201d, the statement said. However, the court said it had taken into account mitigating circumstances such as the fact that Tang confessed after his arrest, expressed remorse, pleaded guilty and cooperated with the investigation. Another former Chinese justice minister, Fu Zhenghua, was convicted of corruption in 2022. He received a death sentence with a two-year reprieve, after which the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Authorities announced last month that they were launching an anti-corruption probe into China\u2019s most powerful general, Zhang Youxia. He is the highest-ranking military figure to be brought down in recent decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEIJING(National times)- A court in China said on Monday it had sentenced a former justice minister to life in prison after finding him guilty of accepting bribes totalling almost $20 million over more than a decade.Tang Yijun, 64, was China\u2019s justice minister from 2020 to 2023 and held various other positions during his career, including […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120094,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n