Ex-cyberspace chief charged
Lu Wei accused of taking huge amounts of bribes
Prosecutors in Ningbo, East China’s Zhejiang Province have filed corruption charges against the former head of the country’s cyberspace administration, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) said on Monday.
Prosecutors said Lu Wei took advantage of his positions by taking huge amounts of cash and goods from others and seeking benefits for them, the SPP statement said.
Lu, former deputy head of the publicity department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and former head of the Cyberspace Administration of China, was expelled from the Party and dismissed from public office for offenses including bribery, the Xinhua News Agency reported in February.
The CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said in a statement issued in February that Lu was found to “lie to, make reckless remarks on the CPC Central Committee and disturb the patrolling works of the committee,” and that he was “extremely disloyal to the CPC Central Committee.”
According to the statement, Lu had a “boasting ambition” and unscrupulously made a show of his power. It also blasted Lu’s “vicious conduct,” saying he anonymously made false accusations against others, formed cliques and frequently entered private clubs.
As a senior Party official, Lu lost his faith, his mission and “completely lost Party spirit,” it added.
Lu was later used as a warning to eliminate threats to the political security of the CPC in provincial anti-corruption education, with East China’s Anhui Province, Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province and South China’s Guangdong Province launching education campaigns in April and May asking Party members and officials to use Lu as a negative example.
Zhuang Deshui, deputy director at Peking University’s Research Center for Government Integrity-Building, told the Global Times on Monday that such corruption, including taking advantage of positions to accumulate illegal wealth and trading money for power, has done great damage to the public interest and the image of the Party and the country.
Mo Jiancheng, a former member of the CPC Committee of the Ministry of Finance, and Zhang Jiehui, a former deputy director of the Standing Committee of the Hebei Provincial People’s Congress, were also charged with bribery, according to the same statement from the SPP.
“Prosecuting the three at this time shows again the Party’s determination to fight corruption,” Zhu Lijia, a professor of public management at the Chinese Academy of Governance, told the Global Times on Monday.
“Laws must be applied to judge corruption,” Zhu said.
“The prosecutions mark China’s accelerating steps in terms of anti-corruption by the legal system,” Zhuang noted.
Announcing the prosecutions to the public will let people better understand the process of anti-corruption and is a form of education, Zhuang said, adding that it has become a strong deterrent for those officials who still plan to go corrupt.