MCLC: Bo trial (1)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Bo trial (1)
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (8/24/13):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/world/asia/trial-delves-further-into-chin
ese-politicians-family-life.html

Trial Delves Further Into Chinese Politician’s Family Life
By JONATHAN ANSFIELD and EDWARD WONG

JINAN, China — Prosecutors in the trial of Bo Xilai, the former Communist
Party star, presented testimony on Friday asserting that he knew about a
villa on the French Riviera bought for his family by a tycoon and about
demands for compensation from a British businessman managing the villa who
was later murdered by Mr. Bo’s wife.

The testimony was aimed at proving that Mr. Bo knew about favors his
family was accepting from the tycoon, Xu Ming. But Mr. Bo denied knowledge
of such crimes on the second day of his trial, which has been unveiled for
the public via an unexpected feed of titillating official microblog posts
from the court here in northern China. The use of the microblog suggests
pressure on the party to make transparent the case against Mr. Bo, a
polarizing neo-leftist politician from a powerful Communist revolutionary
family, but at the risk of exposing weakness in the prosecution and
bolstering public support for Mr. Bo.

Testimony on Saturday delved further into the private lives of the Bo
family. Defending against the charge that he had embezzled government
money, Mr. Bo gave reasons he would not have needed the money to help
support his family. Among them was that he and his wife, Gu Kailai, had
separated in 2000 because she had found out about an affair he had had.

Out of spite, Mr. Bo said, she took their son to Britain, where they lived
until 2007, and where the son attended a private school. Soon after this
testimony was posted on the court microblog, the news site of Sina, a
popular Web portal, posted the headline: “Bo Xilai admits in court having
had an affair, wife took son off to England in a rage.”

Ms. Gu had earned a good living at her law firm, Mr. Bo said, and had
assets totaling 20 to 30 million renminbi, or $3.3 million to $4.9
million, by the time she went to Britain. He also said his son was a good
student who had received scholarships, so there was no need to embezzle
money to pay for his education.

In the afternoon, the court turned to addressing another charge against
Mr. Bo, abuse of power, which involved conflicts that Mr. Bo had had with
Wang Lijun, then the police chief of Chongqing, over a murder
investigation involving his wife.

On Friday, officials had taken measures to temper some of the spectacle
surrounding Mr. Bo’s trial. A person briefed on the proceedings said that
under orders from the authorities, the day’s transcripts were less
comprehensive than those released Thursday, the trial’s opening day. The
newer ones were vetted longer before being posted and offered fewer
rebuttals from Mr. Bo and his lawyers.

And the party intensified its case against Mr. Bo in the state media, not
just in court. On Friday, official news outlets issued a chorus of
commentaries that said the evidence against Mr. Bo, once the party leader
in the sprawling southwestern metropolis of Chongqing, was overwhelming.
The commentaries lauded the trial as fair and open while effectively
prejudging Mr. Bo.

“Confronted with the facts, Bo’s attitude was to flaunt his cunning and
use a hundred kinds of denial,” said a commentary on the Web site of
Guangming Daily, a party newspaper. “The documents are there in black and
white, and the evidence is overwhelming. Bo Xilai’s self-defense collapsed
instantly before the evidence, so that his sophistry was futile and
laughable.”

On Friday, Mr. Bo upbraided the prosecution’s main witnesses, including
Ms. Gu, who appeared in a video recording being interrogated about the
family’s finances.

“How much of it is believable?” Mr. Bo said of Ms. Gu’s testimony. “She
has become crazy, and she often tells lies. She was mentally unstable and
under enormous pressure from the investigators to inform on me.”

Witnesses for the prosecution painted a vivid portrait Friday of family
life within the Bo clan, which appeared to be awash in favors from Mr. Xu.
According to testimony, Mr. Bo’s younger son, Bo Guagua, went to Africa in
2011 at Mr. Xu’s expense, and brought back for his father a slab of meat
from a rare animal that he insisted should be eaten raw. The father had it
cooked, though, to the young Mr. Bo’s disappointment, and the family
feasted on it for a month. The cost of the six-person Africa trip was
nearly $131,000 — including $80,000 for a charter jet from Dubai to the
Mount Kilimanjaro area.

Mr. Xu also paid for a trip in 2011 to China by Bo Guagua, then a graduate
student at Harvard, and 40 of his fellow students. As for the villa, the
elder Mr. Bo helped his wife plan the aesthetics — “he’s an expert in home
renovation and decoration,” Ms. Gu testified.

In August 2012, Ms. Gu was convicted of the murder of the British
businessman, Neil Heywood, and given a suspended death sentence,
essentially life in prison. Mr. Heywood’s death and the ensuing scandal
led to Mr. Bo’s downfall. He is charged with taking bribes, embezzlement
and abuse of power. The embezzlement charge accuses him of taking $800,000
in government money earmarked for a construction project, and the abuse of
power charge accuses him of trying to obstruct an investigation into Mr.
Heywood’s murder.

Testimony on Friday centered on the villa, which French documents show was
owned by Patrick Devillers, a French friend of the Bo family. According to
testimony from Mr. Devillers and others read aloud in court, Mr. Devillers
was a frontman in the purchase; Ms. Gu bought the villa more than a decade
ago as an investment for her son with $3.2 million from Mr. Xu, the tycoon.
Prosecutors said Ms. Gu used different people in the French company that
managed the property as fronts to hide her ownership. Mr. Heywood was
brought in to hold Ms. Gu’s shares in the villa in 2007, and then removed
in 2011. Prosecutors said he then demanded $2.2 million from Ms. Gu and
threatened Bo Guagua; she poisoned Mr. Heywood in November 2011 because of
the threats.

In a sign of inconsistencies among official accounts, the story spun by
prosecutors on Friday was different from the one that officials presented
at Ms. Gu’s trial. At that time, officials said Mr. Heywood had demanded
$22 million, mostly as compensation for a failed property project in
Chongqing. He threatened Bo Guagua in efforts to get that money, those
prosecutors said, and that made Ms. Gu fearful.

Bo Guagua, who has just started classes at Columbia Law School in New
York, did not respond to an e-mail request for comment on Friday. Family
members of Mr. Heywood could not be reached for comment.

Officials from the court, the police and state security met late Thursday
in Jinan to review the handling of the trial, according to a person
briefed on the case. They determined that it was under control despite the
uproar caused by Mr. Bo’s spirited defense. “The authorities did not seem
to think that was so unexpected,” the person said.

There was no doubt, though, that the unveiling of testimony on Friday was
more tightly managed than it had been on Thursday. Though more than an
hour of video testimony from Ms. Gu was played in court, officials posted
only an 11-minute clip online, he said. Ms. Gu spoke to an interrogator
about expensive items that Mr. Xu had bought for the Bo family, including
abalone, airplane tickets and a Segway-like vehicle that the son wanted.

Mr. Bo denied any knowledge of payments by Mr. Xu, which some legal
scholars said was smart strategy. “Bo’s defense today is that he was
unaware of the bribes Gu took, which stands legally,” said Jiang Tianyong,
a liberal lawyer and rights defender. “If he was unaware and took no part
in the bribetaking, he has no responsibility, even if he is married to Gu.”

Chris Buckley contributed reporting from Hong Kong. Patrick Zuo
contributed research from Jinan, and Mia Li from Beijing.