Ex-official executed for stealing relics
Source: Xinhua |
November 20, 2010, Saturday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
AN ex-official in Hebei Province was executed yesterday for stealing and selling cultural relics, including many on the state protection list, a local court said.
Li Haitao, chief of the cultural relics protection authority of the imperial garden in Chengde City in Hebei, was executed after China's Supreme People's Court approved the death penalty on a conviction of embezzlement, the Intermediate People's Court of Chengde said.
By taking advantage of his post between 1993 and 2002, Li was found to have stolen 259 cultural relics stored in the depository of the Eight Outer Temples, an imperial compound built on hillsides to the north and east of the Summer Mountain Resort.
Li, 50, replaced the relics with copies, inferior or incomplete objects and instigated subordinates to alter their archives.
The stolen items included a number of gold gilded Buddha statues, five were state relics under first class protection, 56 were in the second grade and 58 in the third.
Li pocketed more than 3.2 million yuan (US$482,240) and US$72,000 after selling 152 stolen pieces to his customers.
China police have seized 202 relics and are still hunting for the other 57 items.
Li's four accomplices - Wang Xiaoguang, Yan Feng, Zhang Huazhang and Chen Fengwei - were given jail terms of up to seven years as well as fines for buying and selling the relics.
Li's crimes went unnoticed until a Chinese expert found two royal cultural relics belonging to Beijing's Palace Museum at an auction in Hong Kong in 2002.
The expert reported his discovery to the state cultural heritage authorities, which prompted an investigation that found Chengde was the source of the relics.
Covering an area of 5.6 million square meters, the Summer Mountain Resort was Emperor Kangxi's and Emperor Qianlong's temporary imperial palace of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).
Li Haitao, chief of the cultural relics protection authority of the imperial garden in Chengde City in Hebei, was executed after China's Supreme People's Court approved the death penalty on a conviction of embezzlement, the Intermediate People's Court of Chengde said.
By taking advantage of his post between 1993 and 2002, Li was found to have stolen 259 cultural relics stored in the depository of the Eight Outer Temples, an imperial compound built on hillsides to the north and east of the Summer Mountain Resort.
Li, 50, replaced the relics with copies, inferior or incomplete objects and instigated subordinates to alter their archives.
The stolen items included a number of gold gilded Buddha statues, five were state relics under first class protection, 56 were in the second grade and 58 in the third.
Li pocketed more than 3.2 million yuan (US$482,240) and US$72,000 after selling 152 stolen pieces to his customers.
China police have seized 202 relics and are still hunting for the other 57 items.
Li's four accomplices - Wang Xiaoguang, Yan Feng, Zhang Huazhang and Chen Fengwei - were given jail terms of up to seven years as well as fines for buying and selling the relics.
Li's crimes went unnoticed until a Chinese expert found two royal cultural relics belonging to Beijing's Palace Museum at an auction in Hong Kong in 2002.
The expert reported his discovery to the state cultural heritage authorities, which prompted an investigation that found Chengde was the source of the relics.
Covering an area of 5.6 million square meters, the Summer Mountain Resort was Emperor Kangxi's and Emperor Qianlong's temporary imperial palace of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).
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