Lu Wei at the court hearing yesterday.(China News Service)
The bribery case of Lu Wei, former vice minister of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and former director of the State Cyberspace Affairs Commission, was tried in Ningbo yesterday. Lu Wei made a final statement in court and pleaded guilty in court.The court will pronounce a sentence at an optional date.
The bribery case of Lu Wei, former vice minister of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and former director of the State Cyberspace Administration of China, was heard in Ningbo Intermediate Court in Zhejiang yesterday. Lu Wei made a final statement in court and pleaded guilty in court.The court will select a date to pronounce the verdict on the Lu Wei case.
Analysis: Unexpected death sentence with reprieve or indefinite period
Ningbo prosecutors charged that from July 2002 to the second half of 2017, Lu Wei took advantage of his positions as secretary-general and vice president of Xinhua News Agency, deputy mayor of Beijing, director of the State Cyberspace Affairs Commission, and deputy director of the Central Propaganda Department.Convenience and authority, seeking benefits for relevant units and individuals in matters such as network management and job promotion, and accepting property from relevant units and individuals directly or through others, totaling more than 32 million yuan (RMB, the same below, SGD 6.36 million)).
Relevant sources analyzed that although the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection once denounced Lu Weiyang in the report for violating the law, deceiving the central government, having bad conduct, and having no sense of shame, the judiciary only tried Lu Wei for accepting bribes, and compared with Zhou Benshun and other high-level officials who were sentencedThe amount of bribes Lu Wei accepted is not too large, and Lu Wei has also pleaded guilty and repented. It is expected that Lu Wei will not be sentenced to death with a reprieve or life imprisonment.
After Zhou Benshun, the former secretary of the Hebei Provincial Party Committee of the Communist Party of China, was sacked in July 2015, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection also denounced him as a serious violation of the Communist Party's discipline, which was of a bad nature and the circumstances were particularly serious.The judiciary accused Zhou Benshun of accepting more than 40 million yuan in bribes, but the Xiamen Intermediate Court finally sentenced Zhou Benshun to 15 years in prison for the crime of accepting bribes. The reason given by the court was that Zhou Benshun truthfully confessed his crimes after arriving at the case, and voluntarily confessed the part that the case-handling agency had not yet grasped.The facts of the crime of accepting bribes, pleaded guilty and repented, actively returned the stolen goods, and all the stolen money and stolen goods have been recovered.
According to Xinhuanet, during the trial of Lu Wei's case, the public prosecution agency presented relevant evidence, Lu Wei and his defenders cross-examined evidence, and the prosecution and defense fully expressed their opinions under the auspices of the court.More than 60 people, including deputies to the National People's Congress, Zhejiang Province, and Ningbo Municipal People's Congress, members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, special supervisors of the People's Court, journalists and people from all walks of life attended the trial.
The 58-year-old Lu Wei is the first ministerial-level official to be sacked after the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.Lu Wei was born in a poor family. After graduating from high school, he returned to rural Anhui to work as a scorekeeper in the production team and a private teacher.In 1980, Lu Wei left Anhui to work as a worker and propaganda officer in a factory in Guilin, Guangxi. During this period, he obtained a diploma from Guangxi Radio and Television University through self-study, and was transferred to work in the Guangxi judicial system as a reporter and editor-in-chief assistant for Guangxi Legal News.In 1991, Lu Wei was transferred to be the head of the Guilin reporter station of Xinhua News Agency.
On November 24, 1992, a Boeing 737 passenger plane of China Southern Airlines flew from Guangzhou to Guilin and disintegrated over Yangshuo, Guilin. All 133 passengers and eight crew members on board were killed.At that time, the society had different opinions on the cause of the air crash, and some even believed that it was a hijacking.Lu Wei quickly led a team to the scene, collected and wrote manuscripts such as the Guilin air crash was not caused by hijacking and fighting, which played a role in dispelling the rumors about the hijacking causing the crash.
In 1992, Lu Wei was named one of the top ten outstanding talents of Xinhua News Agency.In 1994, Lu Wei became the vice president of the Guangxi branch of Xinhua News Agency, and was promoted to the president of the Guangxi branch in 1997.Lu Wei, who did not go to a regular university, became the youngest bureau-level cadre of Xinhua News Agency at that time, which was quite eye-catching.
In 2001, Lu Wei was transferred to the headquarters of Xinhua News Agency as the deputy secretary-general. In 2004, he was appointed as the vice president of Xinhua News Agency, ranking among the ranks of senior officials at the vice-ministerial level.After 2011, Lu Wei served as the Propaganda Minister and Deputy Mayor of the Communist Party of China in Beijing; in 2013, he served as the first director of the newly established State Internet Information Office and became a minister-level official; in 2014, he was appointed as the Deputy Minister of the Central Propaganda Department.
After Lu Wei became the first director of the Cyberspace Administration of China, he won the title of China's Internet Czar with his strong style.In 2015, Lu Wei was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine.
According to anecdotal reports, at the first World Internet Conference held in China in November 2014, Lu Wei invited some foreigners and students to pretend to be experts and scholars to attend the conference in order to create a grand event.After the incident was revealed, it aroused the anger of the high-level officials and became evidence that Lu Wei had deceived the central government.
In November last year, Lu Wei came under official investigation.In February of this year, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection announced the results of the investigation of Lu Wei, accusing Lu Wei of seriously violating the political discipline and rules of the CCP.Form factions, selectively implement the central government's strategic deployment of cybersecurity and informatization work, use power for color, and have no shame.
