What’s new: A former vice chairman of the Hunan provincial political advisory body has been sentenced to life in prison for taking 81.4 million yuan ($11.2 million) in bribes and causing “significant loss” to public assets, state media reported.
Yi Pengfei, 61, procured the bribes from 2003 through 2023 by exploiting his official positions to help others win project contracts, in business operations and getting promotions, a court in Liuzhou, South China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, announced Monday, according to a state-run Xinhua News Agency report.
The court also found Yi guilty of illegally returning land transfer fees to one or more companies, knowing that their requests violated central government policy. He was serving as the party secretary of Chenzhou in Central China’s Hunan province at the time, the report said.
The background: Yi pled guilty to accepting bribes and abusing his power that resulted in a loss of public assets totaling nearly 450 million yuan when he stood trial in December.
Yi’s professional career was mostly spent in his native Hunan, where he worked his way up from an office clerk at the provincial planning department to deputy director of the provincial development and reform commission in the 2000s.
Between 2009 and 2021, Yi served as mayor of Huaihua and Loudi as well as party secretary of Chenzhou, all cities in Hunan. He became the vice chairman of the Hunan provincial committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in 2018 and left the role in January 2023.
Contact reporter Kelly Wang (jingzhewang@caixin.com) and editor Jonathan Breen (jonathanbreen@caixin.com)
