Rail pioneer facing bribes trial
Print Edition
A PIONEER of China’s high-speed railway technology has been accused of receiving huge bribes and helping contractors gain windfall profits from national funds.
Zhang Shuguang, who was deputy chief engineer with the former Ministry of Railways, was sacked from his post in February 2011 for economic violations. Details of the charges against him were revealed when the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court accepted a corruption case against him this week.
Zhang is said to have awarded railway contracts to private companies which resulted in excessive bills for the government and took bribes totalling 47.6 million yuan (US$7.8 million) between 2000 and 2011, the Beijing Evening News reported.
Examples of excessive costs were 1,125 yuan for a box of sanitation paper and a faucet priced at 12,800 yuan.
Some of the suppliers were on a list of companies said to have paid bribes, the newspaper said.
Zhang, 57, started work at the ministry in 1991 and was promoted to director with the vehicle department in 1998.
The newspaper said that after his promotion many domestic railway equipment producers would wait outside his home to offer him incentives to award them contracts.
Zhang is said to have started “cooperating” with Yang Jianyu, boss of Guangzhou Zhongche Railway Vehicles Equipment Co Ltd, in December 2000. Before an investigation in early 2011, he had received 10.50 million yuan from Yang, prosecutors said. In return, the Blue Arrow, a type of high-speed train manufactured by Zhongche, was used in Guangzhou-Shenzhen railway in Guangdong Province. Though the trains lagged behind others in technology, they were in use for more than a decade.
Investigators with the former railways ministry probed allegations that Zhang was corrupt in 2001 but the investigation failed due to lack of evidence. The newspaper said Zhang was later designated a director assistant in Shenyang in China’s northeast in a bid to “have him away from bidding issues.”
But when Liu Zhijun became railways minister in March 2003, Zhang was promoted and became known as Liu’s right-hand man. Earlier this year, Liu was given a suspended death sentence for corruption.
Zhang and his wife bought a US$860,000 house in Walnut, California, for cash in 2002, according to Century Weekly.
Zhang’s assets are said to amount to US$2.8 billion in banks in the US and Switzerland, the Investor Journal reported.
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