Former top city official gets life for corruption

Chen Xu, 65, former Party chief and procurator-general of the Shanghai People’s Procuratorate, was sentenced to life in prison yesterday for taking bribes.

Nanning Intermediate People’s Court in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region also seized Chen’s personal property and remitted the bribes he took and the interest generated to the national treasury.

The court said Chen took money and property worth more than 74.23 million yuan (US$10.69 million) personally or through family members from 2000 and 2015. He took advantage of his positions to help organizations and individuals in the handling of cases, project contracts and civil service recruitment.

The court said Chen had been severely punished because he was a leading judicial official, took an enormous amount of bribes, causing a great loss to the nation and the interests of its people.

However, it said that his confessions after being caught, and telling the police other details they were unaware of, and returning illicit money and property had merited some leniency.

Profiles showed Chen became the deputy director of the city’s political and legal affairs commission in August 2003. About four months later, he was named as deputy secretary-general of the city’s Party committee. In February 2008, he was assigned as Shanghai’s top prosecutor.

He was placed under graft investigation in 2017.