(Oct 10): A Chinese court has handed down a suspended death sentence to a former deputy governor of the central bank for accepting over 386 million yuan (US$54.6 million or RM234.6 million) in bribes, in a high-profile case emblematic of President Xi Jinping’s determination to clean up the financial sector.
Fan Yifei, who’s been in detention since being placed under probe almost two years ago, was found guilty of taking bribes from 1993 to 2022 and other acts of corruption, according to state broadcaster China Central Television. He was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve, a penalty that will be commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Once in charge of overseeing payments and financial technology at the People’s Bank of China, Fan was accused of peddling his influence in exchange for facilitating loans and granting other favours. The charges covered the three decades he spent working for China Construction Bank, China Investment Corp, Bank of Shanghai and the PBOC.
Fan lost his right to parole because his offenses led to “particularly heavy losses,” the CCTV report said on Thursday. Fan was kicked out of the Communist Party in June last year and then charged three months later.
In a televised confession aired earlier this year, Fan admitted he was “completely wrong,” saying in the final episode of a four-part documentary aired on CCTV that he “wanted to be an official and be rich at the same time.”
Fan is the rare high-ranking central banker to get caught up in the crackdown on graft. Xi’s sweeping anti-corruption campaign has implicated a record number of senior officials for two straight years.
China’s US$66 trillion finance industry has come under increased scrutiny in recent years. Authorities have continued to tighten their grip over the sector, labelling bankers as “hedonistic” and creating a new financial corruption work committee, signalling a push for more permanent oversight of the industry.
As of Thursday, a total of 46 senior government officials have been put under disciplinary probes since the beginning of 2024, surpassing last year’s record of 45 with more than two months left to go.
Uploaded by Magessan Varatharaja