Ex-officer ‘filled Mercedes with gold’ as a bribe
Print Edition
A FORMER senior military officer was obsessed with gold and often ferried gold bars for bribes in a luxury car, a Hong Kong magazine reported yesterday, in connection with a graft case which investigators estimate is worth some US$5 billion.
The government charged Lieutenant General Gu Junshan, who had been deputy director of the logistics department of the People’s Liberation Army, with corruption in March, and he is suspected of selling hundreds of military positions.
Phoenix Weekly, a magazine run by Hong Kong broadcaster Phoenix Television, said that the total amounted ill-gotten gains was some 30 billion yuan (US$5 billion), including about 600 million yuan in bribes accepted by Gu.
Gu loved gold, especially gold statues of Buddha, though he preferred receiving ground up gold rather than gold bars when taking bribes, the magazine claimed.
When offering gifts, he would fill up a Mercedes with hundreds of bars of gold and then simply hand over the car keys to the recipient, the report said.
“Gu got exactly what he wanted,” a source told the magazine.
Gu’s case is connected to Xu Caihou, who retired as deputy head of the powerful Central Military Commission last year and from the ruling Communist Party’s decision-making Politburo in 2012.
An investigation into Xu was announced in June.
The magazine said that Gu had powerful patrons, though it did not name Xu, referring only to a person called “X.”
President Xi Jinping launched a sweeping campaign against graft when he became Party chief in late 2012 and president last year, vowing to take down powerful “tigers” as well as lowly “flies.”
He has made weeding out corruption in the military a top goal as he steps up efforts to modernize the army.
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