China on Tuesday (December 17, 2024) executed Li Jianping, a former official in the north Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, who was convicted in the largest-ever corruption case in the country totalling to more than $421 million.
The death sentence of Li, former secretary of the ruling Communist Party working committee of the Hohhot economic and technological development zone, was initially issued in September 2022 and upheld on appeal in August 2024.
Tuesday’s (December 17, 2024) execution followed the approval of the Supreme People’s Court and was carried out by a court in Inner Mongolia, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
“Li (64) was found guilty by an intermediate court earlier of embezzling a staggering three billion yuan (more than $421 million) in illegal gains — the largest sum involved in a single corruption case in China’s history,” according to earlier reports in the Chinese official media.
Since he came to power in 2012, Chinese President Xi Jinping made the anti-corruption campaign the main plank of his governance model. Official media accounts say that more than a million party officials, including two Defence Ministers and dozens of military officials, were punished and prosecuted in the campaign.
In his speech delivered at the plenary session of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) in January this year, contents of which were released for the first time on Sunday (December 15, 2024) by party theoretical magazine Qiushi, 71-year-old Xi has called on cadres to confront corruption head-on so that interest groups cannot prey on the ruling Communist Party.
