The story appears on

Page A7

May 25, 2010

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

HomeNation

Violent businessman gets long jail sentence

THE head of a mafia-linked ring in central China's Hubei Province has been sentenced to 20 years in jail.

The ring, headed by Wei Zhijun, 40, allegedly forced a monopoly of the building-material market in the Wujiashan area of Wuhan City, injuring 27 people in the process, including 7 seriously, yesterday's Changjiang Daily reported.

Wu launched the ring in 2002 after making profits in his first deal to supply building materials. Finding it too slow to make money legally, he decided to speed things up by forcing a monopoly.

In April 2004, Wei had ring members attack and injure a man surnamed Lei to get a supply contract for a carton factory.

In August 2008, Wei organized more than 30 ring members in a fight at a construction site in Dongxihu area, resulting in one injury.

The ring also registered a company to ink fake supply contracts. For example, it priced sand at 70 yuan (US$10) a cubic meter, 15 yuan higher than the market average, and forced the customers to pay for 25 percent more sand than the actual quantity supplied.

Police started investigating the ring starting early last year after receiving reports from an angry public.

They caught 25 leading members, including Wei, in June 2009 and seized four guns and 10 bullets, as well as vehicles valued at 1.5 million yuan. They also froze 1 million yuan of the ring's.

 

Copyright 漏 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

娌叕缃戝畨澶 31010602000204鍙

Email this to your friend