Extramarital affair left couple estranged
Print Edition
Former Chongqing Party chief Bo Xilai told a court yesterday that his wife stole government funds without his involvement and revealed how the couple became estranged after he was unfaithful.
Bo also mocked as implausible former Dalian official Wang Zhenggang’s testimony that Bo had facilitated the embezzlement of 5 million yuan (US$800,000) public funds from the government of Dalian, Liaoning Province, where Bo had served as mayor and Party chief before moving on to the provincial governor, with a phone call to his wife Bogu Kailai.
However, Bo expressed remorse that he had not acted to stop the misconduct.
Last August, Bogu, 54, was sentenced to death, with a two-year grace period, for murdering British businessman Neil Heywood, with the help of Zhang Xiaojun, a family aide, who got a nine-year jail term.
She fed the Briton poison when he was drunk at a Chongqing hotel room in November 2011, killing him as she believed he was planning to kidnap and murder her son, Bo Guagua, following a row over a luxury villa in France.
“I am ashamed of it. I was too careless, because this is public money,” Bo told the Jinan Intermediate People’s Court, according to a court transcript.
“I failed to retrieve the money, and that’s a factual statement, but can you say I had the intention to embezzle the money? No.”
Bo said he agreed to Wang speaking to Bogu about the money because he “lacked alertness,” which is how the money ended up going to her.
“After Bogu and Wang had their discussions, I did not go and investigate, I let it slide. It was more than a decade ago, I don’t really remember the details,” Bo said.
“This money had already gone into my wife’s account, leading to the personal use of public money,” he said.
“I am willing to approve the analysis of the prosecutors after their investigation, and at the same time accept legal responsibility for this. I am deeply ashamed and regretful about this incident,” Bo said.
Meanwhile, the 64-year-old questioned the testimonies of his wife and others that prosecutors presented, that in 2000 he told Bogu to take the government funds to cover the expenses of accompanying their son in Britain while he attended school.
Bo said that Bogu had piles of her own money, and that she had taken their son, then 13, to Britain in a fit of rage after he had been unfaithful.
“She left after giving me only the courtesy of a notification,” Bo said. “At the time, I’d had an affair, and she was very angry. She took Bo Guagua away, largely because she felt wronged and was acting rashly.”
It was the third day of a trial in which Bo had earlier dismissed testimony from his wife, saying she was “crazy.”
Bo similarly questioned the testimony of Wang, then an official with a land planning department in Dalian, where Bo was Party chief at the time.
Wang testified that Bo made a call to his wife in front of him 13 years ago and said he was going to funnel 5 million yuan in funds from a government project to their family, an account Bo called implausible. “Is this in line with the way an embezzler would think?” Bo said.
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