China jails wife, son of former security czar

BEIJING: China has jailed the son of its former security chief for 18 years and his wife for nine, a court and state media said on Wednesday, just over a year after the official was imprisoned for life partly on his family’s testimony.

State-broadcaster CCTV said a court in the central province of Hubei handed down the sentence to Zhou Yongkang’s son Zhou Bin after finding him guilty of "bribery and illegal business activity".

Zhou Yongkang is the highest level official to be sentenced in a sweeping anti-graft campaign championed by President Xi Jinping since he came to power in 2012.

A court in the city of Yichang also fined Zhou Bin more than 350 million yuan and will confiscate all of his "illegally obtained assets", the official Xinhua news agency said.

Jin Xiaoye, Zhou Yongkang’s wife, received a nine-year sentence for taking bribes, the Yichang court said on its social media account.

The reports said that Zhou Bin was jailed on Wednesday, while Jin’s sentence was handed down in "recent days", and that neither would appeal.

Zhou Yongkang, 73, was jailed for life last June after a secret trial.

A former member of the ruling Communist Party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee, he was the highest ranking ex-official prosecuted by Beijing for corruption since the early 1980s, when the infamous Gang of Four -- including former leader Mao Zedong’s widow Jiang Qing -- were put on trial and blamed for the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.

His role heading the Central Politics and Law Commission put him in charge of China’s police, courts, jails and domestic surveillance. Shielded from scrutiny by a vast network of lieutenants in China’s internal security network, Zhou was seen as untouchable.

But that did not protect him from taking a fall on charges of "bribery, abuse of power and leaking state secrets", state media reported at the time of his sentencing.

At a closed hearing, a court said Zhou and a number of associates received more than 2.1 billion yuan in profits from various illegal business activities.

His trial included video testimony from his wife and son, state media said at the time.

The ruling party closely controls China’s courts, which have a near-perfect conviction rate, meaning Zhou and his family were virtually certain to be found guilty once prosecuted.

Respected financial magazine Caijing reported last year on alleged business dealings between a "mafia-style" boss, mining tycoon Liu Han, and Zhou Bin.

Other associates of the elder Zhou have been jailed in recent months.

Ji Wenlin, a former deputy governor of the island province Hainan and a close ally of Zhou Yongkang was sentenced in March to 12 years in prison for corruption.

Another ally of the ex-security czar, Li Dongsheng, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for corruption in January, accused of taking nearly 22 million yuan in bribes.

Xi has warned that rampant graft threatens the survival of the party.

The crackdown has swept up scores of senior officials in the party, the government, the military and state-owned companies.