What’s new: Yi Pengfei, former vice chairman of the political consultative conference of Hunan province, has pleaded guilty to taking tens of millions of yuan in bribes and abusing his power, with the latter alleged crime resulting in the loss of public assets totaling nearly 450 million yuan ($62.9 million), state media reported.
Yi stood trial in Liuzhou in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region Thursday, where prosecutors accused him of taking advantage of his official positions to help others with project contracting, business operations and fund applications between 2003 and 2022, accepting over 81.4 million yuan in return for his favors, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.
The 61-year-old is also charged with violating regulations on land transferals by granting unauthorized preferential premiums requested by one or more companies in 2019 and 2020. His action allegedly caused the loss of public property worth more than 448 million yuan, the report said.
The verdict on Yi’s case will be announced by Liuzhou Intermediate People’s Court at a later date, according to Xinhua.
The background: Yi is a native of Yiyang in Central China’s Hunan province. After graduating from the Hunan College of Finance and Economics, which was later merged into Hunan University, he became a clerk at the finance and trade department of Hunan’s planning commission.
He went on to work his way up to serve as deputy director of the province’s top economic planning commission, public information showed.
Between 2009 and 2021, Yi had also served as mayor of Huaihua and Loudi as well as party secretary of Chenzhou, Hunan.
Contact reporter Kelly Wang (jingzhewang@caixin.com) and editor Lu Zhenhua (zhenhualu@caixin.com)
Get our weekly free Must-Read newsletter.
