A court in eastern China has sentenced a former government official to death after finding him guilty of accepting more than 2.2 billion yuan, about $325 million, in bribes over a 30-year period.
The former official, Yang Youlin, was also convicted of embezzlement, abuse of power and money laundering.
Chinese state media reported that Yang held several positions in Nanjing between 1993 and 2023, where he allegedly used his offices to help individuals obtain engineering contracts, land transfers and financing in exchange for cash and other valuables.
According to the Changzhou court, Yang’s crimes were “of an extremely serious nature” and caused “exceptionally heavy losses to the interests of the state and the people.”
The court said the 69-year-old abused his authority for decades, making his case one of the country’s biggest corruption scandals in recent years.
Yang was investigated under President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign, which has targeted senior officials across the military, banking sector and other government institutions.
Although Yang cooperated with investigators and pleaded guilty, the court ruled that the seriousness of his crimes outweighed any mitigating factors.
The court said his assistance to investigators “was insufficient to warrant a more lenient punishment.”
State media also reported that Yang expressed remorse during his final statement before sentencing.
Capital punishment for financial crimes is uncommon in China but has been imposed in cases involving exceptionally large amounts of money.
In 2021, former finance executive Lai Xiaomin was executed after being convicted of taking 1.8 billion yuan in bribes.
Similarly, former Inner Mongolia official Li Jianping was executed in 2024 after being found guilty of embezzlement and accepting more than 3 billion yuan in bribes.
While many corruption cases in China end with prison terms or suspended death sentences that are later commuted to life imprisonment, courts have reserved the death penalty for some of the country’s largest financial crimes.
