China: C P expels 9 over Shanghai scandal

Shanghai, Mar 2: Nine Shanghai government officials and corporate executives have been kicked out of the Communist Party and dismissed from their posts for alleged involvement in a 475 million dollars pension fund scandal, the Xinhua news agency reported today.

The officials will face criminal charges, Xinhua said, citing the Shanghai Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party.

The expelled officials include Zhu Junyi, former director of the Shanghai Bureau of Labour and Social Security, Qin Yu, former deputy secretary of Shanghai's Baoshan District Communist Party Committee, and Sun Luyi, former deputy secretary-general of the Communist Party's Shanghai Committee.

''The three officials were accused of taking huge bribes, immoral behaviour and leading decadent lifestyles,'' Xinhua said.

Others dismissed include Wang Chengming and Han Guozhang, executives with the Shanghai Electric Group, Wu Hongmei, former deputy director of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission in Shanghai, and Wang Guoxiong, former general manager of Shanghai Industrial Investment Group, it said.

Xinhua did not mention the other two officials who were also expelled.

A Xinhua report published in the Shanghai Securities News said Lu Qiwei, a former official at the Shanghai labour and social security bureau, and Zhu Wenjin, a former Shanghai property and land official, had also been expelled for alleged involvement in the scandal.

An official investigation started in August into the misuse of money in the city's 10 billion yuan (1.3 billion dollar) social security fund has implicated more than a dozen senior city officials and businessmen, including former Shanghai party chief Chen Liangyu, the most senior Chinese Communist Party official to be sacked since 1995.

Chen was accused of misusing pension funds and helping to enrich cronies in a case that exposed corruption in China's wealthiest and most cosmopolitan city.

Xinhua did not say whether Chen had also been expelled from the Party. It said the scandal involved 3.7 billion yuan (about 475 million dollar), including 3.45 billion yuan in principal and 250 million yuan in interest.

Qiu Xiaohua, former head of China's statistics bureau, will face criminal charges over his alleged involvement, state media reported in January. Qiu has been expelled from the party and dismissed from all his administrative positions.

Han Zheng, the acting Communist Party boss in Shanghai, said in January that authorities had fully recovered the misappropriated social security funds and said the case had an ''odious political impact''.

Reuters>