BEIJING
A former deputy party chief of a populous Chinese province allied to detained former security boss Zhou Yongkang has admitted to some of the charges filed against him, local media reported Friday.
Li Chuncheng, former vice Communist Party chief of southwestern Sichuan, was charged with accepting bribes and abuse of power in Xianning city, central Hubei province.
Li, 58, had been the first provincial official to fall under President Xi Jinping’s anti-graft drive – under which Zhou is the highest-ranking official to be investigated.
He expressed his regret Thursday in the Xianning Intermediate People’s Court, which said Li could be handed a lenient sentence since he had returned the majority of his allegedly illegal income and confessed to some of the charges.
The Shanghai Daily reported that prosecutors told the court that Li had accepted bribes amounting to almost 40 million yuan ($6.4 million) between 1999-2012, and had sought profits for others in land development and project contracts.
Prosecutors also charged him with “offering interests to others” between 2001- 2011 at the instigation of Zhou, according to the daily.
Li was placed under investigation in Dec. 2012 before being expelled from the Party in April 2014. He was formally charged last month after the Supreme People's Procuratorate finalized the investigation into his case.
According to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, Li was appointed in 1998 vice-mayor of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan -- Zhou’s power base where he served as party chief between 1999-2002.
Zhou was formally charged with bribery, abuse of power and intentional disclosure of state secrets earlier this month.
As secretary of the Political and Legislative Affairs Committee from 2007 until his retirement in 2012, Zhou had overseen China's police, intelligence agencies, court system and paramilitary forces.
He was placed under investigation last July, before being arrested and expelled from the Communist Party in December.
Last week, another Zhou ally, former chief of China’s state-owned companies Jiang Jiemin, admitted in court that he was guilty of corruption and abuse of power.
Jiang had joined the China National Petroleum Corporation, of which he later became chairman, in 1999 -- a year after Zhou left his post as its general manager to serve as the Minister for Land and Resources.
Since its launch in 2013, Xi’s anti-corruption campaign has investigated tens of thousands of suspects, including dozens of high-profile individuals at the top of the Communist Party.
