Last year, when the anti-corruption movement captured the public imagination nationwide, Swami Ramdev had sparked off considerable controversy with his remark that India should emulate China in dealing with corrupt officials, that is to say, hang them. While not endorsing this extreme position, as more and more unsavoury scandals and loot of public resources come to light, the Chinese ethos of top down accountability of the high and mighty does seem a just and efficacious method of tackling the endemic corruption in public life in most modern nations today.
What appeals most to the common citizenry is the unrelenting approach of the authorities in cracking down on the corrupt, and the severe sentences awarded by the Chinese judiciary. Men who have taken less than one million dollars are given the death sentence; in contrast, Indian ministers with billions stashed away in untraceable havens receive bail from the apex court.
Gabriel Colwell of Squire Sanders monitors China’s anti-corruption enforcement regularly, and as new crimes spill out of the Indian governmental closet with disturbing frequency, it would be worth our while to look at some of the cases handled by our neighbouring country. What is instantly notable is strict action by government, and high adherence to propriety by corporates.
In April 2012, Jiao Baohua, municipal party secretary of Yining City, Yili Kazak Autonomous County, Urumqi Municipality, received the death penalty with a two year reprieve for receiving bribes exceeding RMB 34.65 million (USD 5.5 million) and abusing his powers as a government official. Such a sentence is normally commuted to life in prison if the convict behaves well in jail. Jiao’s conduct allegedly led to public losses of RMB 53.72 million (USD 8.53 million).
China’s e-commerce giant, Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd, reported in May 2012 that it had taken legal action against some staff members working for its wholly-owned subsidiary Taobao.com. This is China’s biggest B2C doc.com company. An internal investigation showed that several Taobao employees had helped some of its online vendors remove negative comments posted by customers for their products so as to elevate the vendors’ performance ratings. The employees received unlawful payments from the vendors for this favour. Alibaba shut down nine online shops believed to be involved in this improper conduct.
In May 2012, Wang Jiping, former chief of Beijing’s local taxation bureau, was sentenced to death with a two year reprieve for accepting bribes and embezzling over RMB 14 million (USD 2.2 million). During his tenure, Wang allegedly manipulated the bidding process for government construction tenders and arranged employment for the son of a top government official. He also allegedly conspired with Zhao Yun, legal representative of Beijing Yulin Tianyuan Science and Trade Co., Ltd., to form a joint venture with Beijing’s local taxation information center, a government entity affiliated to Beijing local taxation bureau. Then, Wang asked Yulin Tianyuan to sell tax-controlled passcode machines to the joint venture at inflated prices. Zhao Yun got 13 years imprisonment for his role in the crime.
Every month, Beijing routinely investigates and disposes of crimes of official complicity in corruption. There is simply no ethic of letting cases fester in police investigations or judicial process. The enforcement data is exemplary. The People’s Procuratorate of Chongqing Municipality reported that in just the first four months of 2012, 473 people were prosecuted locally for duty-related crimes; 71 were officials at county level or above, and most were charged with taking bribes.
In June 2012, the auditor general of the National Audit Office disclosed that an audit of 66 cities and counties showed that RMB 2.96 billion (USD 470 million) earmarked for affordable housing programs had been intercepted or embezzled in 2011. Some of the capital was then recovered in July 2012. The same month, Beijing reporting shutting down nearly 90 websites this year for falsely advertising themselves as anti-corruption portals and allegedly extorting companies, government agencies and individuals by threatening to post negative bribery news about them.
China’s anti-corruption scrutiny is comprehensive and continuous. Over 1,000 officials across Guangdong province were investigated for corruption as part of a year-long crackdown on economic crimes, including commercial bribery. In Shenzhen, authorities arrested 146 party officials and civil servants since February 2012 for corrupt activities involving RMB 150 million (USD 23 million).
Next time an Indian politician says corruption is a universal phenomenon, one must reply that legal retribution is an equal phenomenon in some parts of the world.
– 8 September 2012
http://www.niticentral.com/2012/09/on-fighting-graft-learn-from-china.html