Chinese executive guilty, but spared death
Tianjin court ruled against Yu Xuewei in chemical warehouse explosion last year
BEIJING— A Chinese court on Wednesday gave the head of a logistics company a suspended death sentence over a massive explosion at a chemical warehouse in Tianjin last year that killed 173 people, most of them firefighters and police officers.
Tianjin’s No. 2 Intermediate Court ruled that Ruihai International Logistics Chairman Yu Xuewei paid bribes to obtain permission to illegally store more than 49,000 tons of sodium cyanide and other highly toxic chemicals at the company’s warehouse in the city’s port between 2013 and 2015, when the explosion occurred. Such sentences are usually commuted to life in prison after two years.
Various other Tianjin courts gave lesser sentences to 48 other people. They included 25 local government officials and workers accused of dereliction of duty, abuse of power and bribe taking,12 other Ruihai employees accused of taking part in the scheme and 11 employees of a company that provided phoney certificates supporting the company’s operations.
“I want to use this opportunity to apologize to those who died and were hurt in the blasts and their families, as well as all the citizens of the nation,” Yu told judges.
The explosion was among China’s deadliest industrial accidents in recent years and the resulting investigation was directly overseen by the Cabinet.