More Guangdong officials implicated in Gome corruption scandal

Guangdong officials, perhaps not always known for their selflessness and incorruptibility, are in the middle of graft scandal that has brought down the province's top political adviser and (ironically) anti-corruption official.

A vice-director of Guangdong's Public Security Department has been placed under internal supervision and was told to hand over his travel documents and another official, former top graft buster Wang Huayuan, was also detained and dismissed. The two are connected to the ongoing case against long-time Guangdong chief Chen Shaoji, who was accused of “severely violating party discipline” by the CCP's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection last month.

Interestingly, the formula for taking down corruption in this Guangdong case may come from the similar graft case against former-Shanghai party chief Chen Liangyu, who was sentenced to 18 years in jail last year. According to the SCMP (subscription only):

One source said the central government was using the Shanghai case as a model in its handling of the Guangdong corruption case. For example, he said the trouble for Chen Shaoji was directly triggered by a case involving his former subordinate Zheng Shaodong , the former assistant head of public security.

Mr Zheng was reported to be under investigation by the party's disciplinary body for his alleged links to mainland billionaire Wong Kwong-yu, who was detained for share-price manipulation in November.

In the Shanghai scandal, anti-graft officers made the move against Chen Liangyu only after collecting sufficient evidence from his subordinates. Chen Liangyu's downfall was linked to a Shanghai billionaire arrested for financial irregularities.

Wong Kwong-yu, better known as Huang Guangyu on the mainland, was China's richest man and the founder and owner of electronics chain Gome Group. He was detained in November 2008 on suspicions of "stock market manipulation." At that time, he was allegedly worth over $6 billion and had plans to turn Gome into one of the top five companies in the world.

Photo from Caijing