A Chinese court has sentenced a former senior government official to death after finding him guilty of accepting more than 2.2 billion yuan (about $325 million) in bribes over three decades, marking one of the country’s biggest corruption cases in recent years.
The Changzhou Intermediate People’s Court in eastern China handed the death sentence to 69-year-old Yang Youlin, a former official in Nanjing, after convicting him of bribery, embezzlement, abuse of power and money laundering.
oyogist.com gathered that Yang served in various government positions in Nanjing between 1993 and 2023, where he allegedly used his influence to help individuals and companies secure engineering contracts, land transfers and financing approvals in exchange for huge sums of money and valuable gifts.
Sources reports that the court said Yang’s crimes involved more than 2.2 billion yuan in illicit gains and described his offences as “extremely serious,” adding that they caused “exceptionally heavy losses to the interests of the state and the people.”
Despite cooperating with investigators, pleading guilty and expressing remorse during his final statement, the court ruled that the gravity of his crimes made him ineligible for a lighter sentence.
