MCLC: Bo Xilai indicted

[Denton, Kirk]

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

Source: NYT (7/24/13):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/world/asia/bo-xilai.html

Fallen Leader Is Indicted in China
By EDWARD WONG and JONATHAN ANSFIELD

BEIJING — Bo Xilai, the disgraced former Communist Party official, was
indicted on Thursday on criminal charges of bribery, corruption and abuse
of power, paving the way for a prominent trial expected to start within
weeks that could be a climactic chapter in a scandal that exposed sordid
political machinations at the top levels of the party.

The charges were filed at a court in Jinan, the capital of Shandong
Province, in eastern China, a court employee said. Mr. Bo was removed in
March 2012 from his senior post as party chief of Chongqing, a
municipality of 30 million in southwest China. He was laterexpelled from
the Communist Party and its elite 25-member Politburo.

Officials from Shandong have been in Chongqing recently to discuss trial
details there, according to one person in Chongqing with official contacts.

The party’s General Office has circulated an internal document giving
further details of the basis for the charges, said one person in Beijing
with high-level contacts. The document accused Mr. Bo, 64, of taking about
$3.3 million in bribes, embezzling almost $1 million and abusing his power
as a senior official. The document also said a main source of the bribes
was Xu Ming, a billionaire who lives in Dalian, the northeastern city
where Mr. Bo had been the mayor.

Mr. Xu, once listed by Forbes as one of the 10 richest people in China,
has been detained since spring 2012 and is also expected to be criminally
charged. Mr. Xu entered into real estate ventures in Chongqing after Mr.
Bo became party chief there in December 2007, and he made frequent trips
on his private plane to the city. Mr. Xu was part of an inner circle of Bo
family allies that included Ma Biao, a business executive, and Yu Junshi,
a former military intelligence officer who served as a Bo family fixer.
All were detained in spring 2012.

Last August, Mr. Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, was given a suspended death
sentence, which usually equals a life prison term, for murdering Neil
Heywood, a British business executive whose body was discovered in a
Chongqing hotel room in November 2011. In February 2012, the Chonging
police chief, Wang Lijun, fled to a nearby American consulate to tell
officials there of the murder.

Several political analysts said Mr. Bo’s punishment could range from a
prison term of 15 to 20 years to a suspended death sentence. Like those of
his wife, Mr. Bo’s upcoming court sessions are expected to amount to
little more than a show trial, in which a verdict has already been
negotiated by Communist Party leaders.
Mr. Bo would be the first Politburo member to be tried on criminal charges
since 2008, when the former Shanghai party secretary Chen Liangyu was
sentenced to 18 years in prison for corruption.

Shi Da contributed research.