Ex-Chinese Communist party secretary given death sentence for corruption and insider trading

Former Communist Party official convicted for receiving bribed worth about $41m between 2004 and 2020

File: China has given a death sentence to a former Communist Party member for corruption and insider trading (AP)

A former Communist party official from China’s southern Hainan province was sentenced to death for bribery and insider trading.

Tong Daochi — who was also a securities regulator — was handed a death sentence with a two-year reprieve on Thursday, reported the state-run Xinhua news agency.

Tong received bribes worth about $41m between 2004 and 2020, according to Xinhua.

He was also accused of having obtained $507,000 of illegal profit through insider trading when he was the vice head of the issuance department of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) in 2006 and 2007.

The Chinese news agency reported that the two-year reprieve for Tong means his sentence could be commuted to life or a fixed term at the end of the two years if he is not convicted of further crimes or has performed “meritorious service”.

Tong joined the CSRC in 2000 after working at the World Bank and US public policy thinktank RAND Corporation, according to Reuters.

He graduated from Peking University in Beijing and has a master’s degree in public administration from Canada’s Carleton University. He also has a PhD in policy analysis from the RAND Graduate School.

China has also expelled a former top official of eastern Jiangsu province from the Communist Party with a rare accusation of fabricating economic data, just days earlier.

Zhang Jinghua, a former deputy party chief of Jiangsu, was found to have “faked economic figures for personal promotion and meddled in market activities in violation of relevant rules”, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said in a statement on Tuesday.

Reuters also reported earlier this week that Wang Zongcheng, former head of the CSRC’s accounting department, was being probed for suspected violations of laws and regulations.

It said that Mr Wang was head of the CSRC’s bureau in eastern Zhejiang province between July 2016 and December 2018.