CHIH is an offshore unit of China Huarong Asset Management (CHAM). It was taken over by the Citic Group and renamed China Citic Financial Asset Management in January.
Lai, who was executed a month after his sentencing, was found guilty of taking 1.79 billion yuan (US$247 million) in bribes, embezzlement of public assets worth more than 25.13 million yuan (US$3.46 million), and bigamy.
Lai was the first official to receive the ultimate penalty for corruption since Xu Maiyong and Jiang Renjie – former mayors of the eastern cities of Hangzhou, in Zhejiang province, and Suzhou in Jiangsu, respectively, who were put to death in 2011.
According to the CCTV report, Tuesday’s court ruling also permanently stripped Bai of his political rights and ordered that all his personal property be confiscated.
The court acknowledged that Bai had volunteered information leading to other arrests and convictions. However, the bribes he had taken were “particularly huge” and the impacts of his crimes on society “particularly pernicious, causing … serious losses to the interests of the state and the people”.
“Taking all these [factors] into account, [the court] ruled that [Bai] does not deserve a lighter sentence. Hence the death penalty verdict,” the ruling said.
Four other senior Huarong executives, including former chairman of Huarong Real Estate Wang Pinghua, and Qin Ling, who was chairman of Huarong Investment, are awaiting trial.
Guo Jintong, former deputy general manager of Huarong International Holdings, and Zhao Zichun, who held the same position at Huarong Guiyang Real Estate, are also expected to appear in court on charges of corruption.
A Beijing-based criminal lawyer, who declined to be named, said that he expects Bai to appeal on grounds of precedent, citing cases where defendants were given lesser sentences for similar offences.
Zhang Zhongsheng, former deputy mayor of Luliang in northern China’s Shanxi province, was sentenced to death in March 2018 for accepting 1.17 billion yuan (US$161 million) in bribes – later suspended for two years and commuted to life imprisonment after an appeal in October 2021.
China’s top corruption watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) launched a sweeping crackdown on the finance sector this year, in response to Xi’s call to make China a “financial superpower” and contain risks.
In a speech to the CCDI’s third plenary session in January, Xi warned about “prominent problems” such as “repeated financial disorders and corruption, and weak financial supervision and governance capacity”.
