Chinese prosecutors have filed charges against four senior officials suspected of graft, including Su Rong, former vice chairman of the nation's top political advisory body, the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) announced Wednesday.
According to the announcement published on the SPP's official website, Su is charged with taking advantage of his positions to seek benefits for others, accepting a huge amount of bribes and abusing his power.
Su previously served as the chief of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in Northwest China's Qinghai and Gansu provinces and in East China's Jiangxi Province and as vice president of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee. He became vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in 2013.
Su is the first national-level official to be accused of taking bribes at all the ministry-level positions he ever held since the 18th National Party Congress was convened in 2012, The Beijing News reported.
The procuratorate's announcement also said that Su's assets and expenditures obviously exceeded his legal income, and he could not explain how he came by the additional money. Prosecutors also accused him of holding a large amount of property procured by unidentified sources, saying this is proof that Su should be held criminally liable for corruption and abuse of power.
According to The Beijing News, Su Rong confessed that he had accepted money from at least 40 officials above the deputy department level, including Jiang Jiemin, the former head of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission who was sentenced to 16 years in prison in October for causing heavy losses to public property and illegally helping others seek profit.
Apart from Su, former vice governor of North China's Shanxi Province Du Shanxue and former general manager of the State-owned Aluminum Corporation of China Sun Zhaoxue were both charged with taking bribes and holding a large amount of property from unidentified sources, the Xinhua News Agency reported. Du was also charged with having offered bribes.
Meanwhile, Zhao Shaolin, a former member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Jiangsu Provincial Committee and secretary-general of the provincial Party committee, was charged with bribing others to seek benefits for his son's business and fraudulently purchasing foreign currency.
The four officials will be tried within two months, said The Beijing News.
