What’s new: The former top prison chief of South China’s Guangdong province has been expelled from the Communist Party and public office for misconduct, according to local graft busters.
Li Jingyan’s misconduct included “wanting to be an official as well as getting rich,” the provincial discipline inspection commission said on Monday, as it announced the punishments against the former party secretary and ex-director of the Guangdong Prison Administrative Bureau.
Li also obstructed party investigations, used his former positions to seek benefits for others and illegally accepted huge bribes, the commission said in a statement.
The 60-year-old came under investigation for corruption around late July, a source familiar with the matter told Caixin. His last public appearance was on June 27, when he attended a meeting on prison education work in provincial capital Guangzhou, public information showed.
The background: A native of Guangdong, Li has spent most of his four-decade career in the local prison system, serving in a number of prisons as deputy party chief, prison director and other positions.
Between 2016 and 2017, the Foshan prison overseen by the Guangdong Prison Administrative Bureau reported a number of corruption cases involving the then-prison chief and his predecessor, deputy chiefs and political commissars. The officials in question were found to have accepted bribes from businesspeople worth millions of yuan.
Contact reporter Wang Xintong (xintongwang@caixin.com) and editor Jonathan Breen (jonathanbreen@caixin.com)
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