Yang Youlin, former executive deputy director of the administrative committee of Nanjing Development Zone in east China’s Jiangsu Province, was sentenced to death on Monday for accepting bribes.
The Intermediate People’s Court of Changzhou City in Jiangsu also ordered the deprivation of Yang’s political rights for life and the confiscation of all his personal property.
Yang was also convicted of embezzlement, offering bribes, misappropriation of public funds, abuse of power and money laundering, the verdict read.
From 1993 to 2023, Yang took advantage of his various previous posts in Nanjing, the capital city of Jiangsu, to assist organizations and individuals in matters such as securing engineering contracts, business operations, land transfers, and financing. He illegally accepted money and valuables worth more than 2.21 billion yuan (about 325 million U.S. dollars) in total, according to the court.
Moreover, he was found to have colluded with others to fraudulently obtain government funds, given money and valuables to state functionaries to seek improper benefits, misappropriated funds from state-owned companies for others’ business operations, and unlawfully arranged land demolition and development projects, which resulted in serious social repercussions, the verdict read.
Yang had also illegally refunded land transfer fees, causing economic losses to the state, and concealed and disguised the proceeds of his bribery offenses by lending funds to companies under his actual control, according to the verdict.
The court said that Yang accepted an extraordinarily large amount of bribes. His offenses were of an extremely serious nature, had an exceptionally egregious social impact, caused exceptionally heavy losses to the interests of the state and the people, and were extremely grave. He should therefore be sentenced to death in accordance with the law, according to the court.
Although he reported criminal offenses committed by others, which were verified to be true, considering the facts, nature, circumstances and degree of social harm of his bribery offense as a whole, this was insufficient to warrant a more lenient punishment, the court added.
The court held public hearings on the case on March 18 and April 28. During the trial, prosecutors, the defendant and his defense counsel cross-examined the evidence and gave their respective accounts. Yang pleaded guilty and expressed remorse in his final statement.
