Former Minister of the Chinese General Administration Sports Minister (CGAS) Gou Zhongwen has been sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for taking bribes and abusing his power as a government official, a court in Jiangsu Province announced on Monday.
The Yancheng Intermediate Peoples Court accepted more than 236 million yuan ($33.4 million) I and bribes between 2009 and 2024.
According to the ruling, he used his various positions over those years to seek benefits for departments and individuals in business operations and project approval.
Gou, 68, was stripped of his political rights for life, and his personal assets were confiscated.
Separately, the court sentenced him to five years in prison for abuse of power.
It said that from 2012-2013, while serving as a vice-mayor of Beijing, he abused his authority during the acquisition of a related project, leading to significant losses of public assets and harming the interests of State and the public.
The court combined the penalties for both crimes and imposed a suspended death sentence, ordering all illicit gains and related interest transferred to the State treasury.
It said Gou’s crime warranted the death penalty because the bribe were “extremely large”, the circumstances “extremely severe”, the social impact “extremely negative” and losses to the State and public interests “extremely significant”.
However, the court said it considered leniency because Gou confessed, disclosed bribes not yet known to investigators, returned his illicit gains, and made useful attempt at bribey.
Gou Zhongwen was Minister of Sports from 2016-2022, including during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Before that, he was also deputy mayor of the capital for several years.
-9News Nigeria.
