What’s new: Sun Guofeng, a former head of the monetary policy department at the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), has been sentenced to 16 years and six months in prison for taking bribes, leaking state secrets, and engaging in insider trading, according to information released by China’s top prosecutor.
In a document released on Thursday, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate only provided part of Sun’s name and former position, but the description fits the profile of the former central bank official. A corruption probe against him had been announced in May 2022 by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the ruling Communist Party’s top graft-buster.
For almost two decades until 2020, Sun used his positions at the central bank to help people gain access to policy information, including classified information, in exchange for money, according to the document.
In 2014, for example, Sun got wind of the merger and restructuring plan of an unnamed Shanghai-listed company from a brokerage’s vice president and bought the company’s shares before their price soared. The next year, he pocketed more than 11 million yuan ($1.8 million) in returns from the investment, the document shows.
The background: Sun, 51, had spent his entire career at the PBOC, according to information published by the CCDI.
He worked in the monetary policy department from 1996 to 2016, before being promoted as director of the central bank’s finance research institute. Sun moved back to the monetary policy department in 2018 as its director.
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Contact reporter Zhang Yukun (yukunzhang@caixin.com) and editor Lin Jinbing (jinbinglin@caixin.com)
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