Prison for 11 in housing scandal
By Li Xinran |
April 1, 2010, Thursday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
ELEVEN people were sentenced to jail terms between nine months and eight years yesterday in a central China city for their roles in a fraudulent scheme in a draw for government-backed budget homes.
A court in Wuhan City of Hubei Province found Wang Pin, 31, a factory worker and the scheme's planner, Huang Zheng, 27, a programer and Wang's cousin, as well as Liu Shengjun, 25, and Chen Tiancheng, both temporary workers with Wuhan State Land and Housing Measurement Center, guilty of taking 760,000 yuan (US$111,342) in bribes to help ineligible applicants cheat in the draw.
The Hanyang District People's Court sentenced Liu to eight years behind bars plus confiscation of 20,000 yuan in assets.
Wang received six years in jail, plus the confiscation of his assets worth 10,000 yuan.
Chen was given two years and 10,000 yuan worth of his assets were ordered confiscated while Huang was handed a year in prison and 5,000 yuan in assets were confiscated.
The court also found the other seven defendants guilty of offering bribes. They received prison terms from nine months to one year.
According to the indictment, Wang asked Huang to write a draw program early last year and then had Liu and Chen load the cheating program into the government's computer system.
The 11 defendants then collected the money to help 73 clients join the draw on June 12. All were among the 124 finalists out of the 5,141 applicants who were supposed to be low-income families. Six winners had consecutive application numbers, which aroused wide public suspicion and sparked a government investigation.
Suspicions grew when it was found that the six had their addresses moved to Wuhan's Qiaokou District from other areas of the city just days ahead of the draw, which, according to insiders, could have been an attempt to conceal their real addresses as well as their ownership of existing homes. Either would have disqualified them from getting a cheap home.
The center disqualified the six from the cheap homes program. It was not clear whether the other 67 applicants who cheated were punished.
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