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China Jails 2 Officials on Corruption Charges


Jiang Jiemin, left, former chairman of the state-run China National Petroleum Corp., and Li Chuncheng, right, a former deputy party chief for the southwestern province of Sichuan, were each convicted on corruption charges Monday in Hubei province, China.
Jiang Jiemin, left, former chairman of the state-run China National Petroleum Corp., and Li Chuncheng, right, a former deputy party chief for the southwestern province of Sichuan, were each convicted on corruption charges Monday in Hubei province, China.

China convicted two senior officials on corruption charges Monday, sentencing them each to more than a dozen years in jail, as part of Beijing's sweeping anti-graft campaign.

Jiang Jiemin, former chairman of the state-run China National Petroleum Corp., was charged with accepting $2.3 million in bribes and failed to explain the source of another 15 million yuan, according to a court in Hanjiang in the central province of Hubei.

Jiang also violated regulations by providing assistance to others, resulting in losses to the state, according to the court, which sentenced him to 16 years in prison.

Li Chuncheng, a former deputy party chief for the southwestern province of Sichuan, was also convicted of corruption Monday by a court in Xianning, in a different part of Hubei. Li was charged with taking nearly $6.45 million in bribes and was sentenced to 13 years in jail, the court said.

The announcements came on the courts' official microblogs.

President Xi Jinping has spent the past three years trying to root out corruption, saying it threatens the very survival of the ruling Communist Party.

Both Jiang and Li are considered associates of Zhou Yongkang, a once-powerful domestic security chief and a former member of the elite Politburo Standing Committee. Zhou, the most senior person to have been charged with corruption in Xi's anti-graft campaign, was convicted of corruption and is serving a life sentence in jail.

Some material for this report came from AP and Reuters.

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