The official who oversaw the creation of the glitzy Lujiazui business district in Shanghai's Pudong area has been sentenced to life in prison for accepting bribes, the China Daily said on Tuesday. Kang Huijun, 51, formerly vice governor of Pudong, headed the Lujiazui Group and other development bodies from 1993 to 2004.
He was convicted of accepting 5.9 million yuan ($862,700) in bribes, funnelled through his wife, Wang Xiaoqin, 50, who was sentenced to five years in prison. Lujiazui was a swampy point of land that held scattered towns and shabby factories two decades ago. It now boasts China's tallest skyscrapers, as well as the banks, stock exchange and futures markets that have made Shanghai China's financial hub.
A slight, polite man with a precise knowledge of Shanghai's property and infrastructure, Kang was in charge of approving all major land deals and transactions in Lujiazui. He was accused of awarding lucrative contracts and approving land sales in exchange for cash, which he used to buy property at below-market value.
The couple was accused of accumulating 12 million yuan in "unjustified assets." The officials who guided Shanghai's rise have been decimated by a series of property-related corruption cases over the last three years. The highest level official jailed was former Communist Party chief, Chen Liangyu, who was detained in mid-2006.
The "Shanghai clique" is one of the power bases for former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin, whose economic policies fuelled China's boom and enriched coastal cities, but at the cost of a widening gap with the poorer inland regions that the current Hu Jintao administration is trying to redress.
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