Retired airline executive sentenced to life in prison
Print Edition
A retired executive of China Eastern Airlines has been sentenced to life in prison for taking bribes totaling almost 4.9 million yuan (US$790,000), Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court said yesterday.
Chen Haiju, 65, was deputy general manager of the state-owned company and board chairman of its aviation food company from 2003 to 2011.
The court said Chen solicited 2.6 million yuan from a man surnamed Liu to buy a villa in Xuhui District in Shanghai and 1.9 million yuan to spend at casinos around the world.
It did not name the people who paid the bribes, but said Chen gave them special treatment with regard to projects.
Chen also accepted more than 360,000 yuan in cash in his wife’s name from unnamed individuals for “consultation services,” the court said.
Chen pleaded not guilty to the charges.
He argued that he only asked Liu for the 2.6 million yuan because it was his win from a casino in Australia in 2004.
Chen said he asked Liu to look after the money for him because an official at his level cannot take such an amount of cash into China, eastday.com reported. He also argued that he had no idea how much money he had because his driver and secretary were his bookkeepers.
He did not say if he will appeal the sentence.
Prosecutors said Chen was a serious gambler and spent millions of yuan in casinos in Las Vegas, Melbourne, Amsterdam and Macau.
Chen was head of the Air Traffic Management Bureau at the Civil Aviation Administration of China between 1999 and 2003.
He started gambling by playing mahjong for money with the bosses of private companies.
Prosecutors said a man surnamed Ma deliberately lost about 300,000 yuan to Chen at the mahjong table to get a contract for a project. Chen was prosecuted in November 2013.
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