Tycoon and Xi critic gets 18 years' jail for graft

Tycoon Ren Zhiqiang was linked to an article criticising President Xi Jinping over the virus outbreak.
Tycoon Ren Zhiqiang was linked to an article criticising President Xi Jinping over the virus outbreak.

BEIJING • China sentenced outspoken property tycoon Ren Zhiqiang to 18 years' jail on graft charges, months after he was linked to an article criticising President Xi Jinping's handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

The former chairman of Huayuan Property was sentenced yesterday after pleading guilty to four charges including corruption and abuse of power, the No. 2 Beijing Intermediate People's Court said.

Ren was found to have amassed some 132 million yuan (S$27 million) in bribes and other ill-gotten personal benefits between 2003 and 2017, the court said, adding that he had agreed not to appeal.

The allegations also included causing some 117 million yuan of economic losses at unspecified state-owned companies, according to the court, which provided no details about the crimes. Ren was fined 4.2 million yuan.

The jail term was unusually long, although some figures targeted during Mr Xi's eight-year anti-graft campaign have been given suspended death sentences.

If he serves out his full sentence, Ren, 69, would be about 87 by the time of his release.

The trial sent a warning to any would-be critics of Mr Xi, who has run China since 2012.

Ren - the princeling son of a former top Commerce Ministry official - built a reputation for sharp commentary on social media platform Weibo before he criticised Mr Xi's demands for greater loyalty from state media in 2016 and was suspended from the Chinese Communist Party. Mr Xi, whose father, the late Xi Zhongxun, was a revolutionary hero turned vice-premier, is also a princeling.

Ren has been under investigation since March, when he was widely speculated to be the source of an anonymous article blaming a "crisis of governance" for early efforts to cover up the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan city.

The piece warned against a growing concentration of power, describing the country's "great leader" as a "clown with no clothes who was still determined to play emperor". Some of Ren's supporters have expressed doubt about the allegations, arguing that Ren underwent an audit before stepping down from his post at Huayuan Property in 2011 that should have found wrongdoing.

BLOOMBERG

Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on September 23, 2020, with the headline Tycoon and Xi critic gets 18 years' jail for graft. Subscribe