Tycoon who became gang leader executed
Print Edition
A FORMER mining tycoon who led a mafia-style crime gang that ran casinos and killed rivals has been executed along with four of the gang’s members, a court in central China said yesterday.
Liu Han was chairman of energy conglomerate Sichuan Hanlong Group in southwest China’s Sichuan Province.
One of Sichuan’s largest private enterprises, it owned subsidiaries in the electricity, energy, finance, mining, real estate and securities sectors. The company also owned stakes in Australian and US mines.
Prosecutors said Liu was runnig a vast criminal gang in the province. The gang gunned down rivals, maintained fleets of several hundred cars, including Rolls-Royces, Bentleys and Ferraris, and fostered ties to prosecutors and police with drug-fueled parties.
Police recovered three military-issue hand grenades, half a dozen submachine guns, and firearms and knives from the gang.
Liu, his brother Liu Wei and three other men — Tang Xianbing, Zhang Donghua and Tian Xianwei — were executed at an unspecified time after their death sentences were approved by the Supreme People’s Court, according to a statement by the Xianning Intermediate People’s Court in Hubei Province.
The court said it organized meetings between the five and their families before they were executed.
Their convictions came amid an anti-corruption crackdown launched by President Xi Jinping that has ensnared senior politicians and influential businessmen.
The Liu brothers and 34 other defendants were convicted of organizing, leading or participating in a gang, and murder in May last year.
Apart from the five gang members who were executed, five other defendants were sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve, four to life imprisonment and 22 to various prison terms.
The higher people’s court in Hubei had upheld the men’s death sentences in August.
At their initial trial, the gang led by the Liu brothers was identified as a criminal organization as it had an established hierarchy, regular members and profited from criminal activities.
The gang, which was said to have been protected by government officials, illegally monopolized the gaming business in Guanghan City, tyrannized local people and seriously harmed economic and social order, the court said.
In a statement issued yesterday, the Supreme People’s Court said the gang had been linked to eight deaths, gun sales, racketeering, vandalism, obstruction of official duties, disturbance of the peace, gambling and harboring of criminals.
Liu Han was also responsible for a loan racket and other “extremely harmful” monetary crimes, it said.
In September, Meng Jianzhu, head of the Party’s Commission for Political and Legal Affairs, vowed to root out criminal organizations.
“We will target criminal organizations when they are small and allow them no room to regroup and re-emerge,” he said. “Officials who offer protection to criminal organizations will be hunted down mercilessly.”
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