Record River of Graft Leads to Death Penalty for One-Time Water Official

The story of how Li Jianping, a mid-level municipal official in Inner Mongolia, amassed $420 million in illicit gains stunned the nation and sparked public outrage

In a nation of superlatives when it comes to the scale of just about everything, now one former official in North China’s Inner Mongolia can add his dubious achievement to the list: a staggering 3 billion yuan ($420 million) in misappropriated funds and accepted bribes, the biggest haul from graft by an individual in the country’s history, according to Caixin calculations based on publicly available information.

Li Jianping, who once headed a special economic zone in Hohhot and the city’s water management authority, was found guilty of pocketing this massive sum in September 2022 and sentenced to death for corruption, bribery, embezzlement, and engaging in organized crime. He filed an appeal and the Inner Mongolia High Court retried the case in August. A new verdict is still pending.

He is just the latest scalp caught in a decade-long anti-corruption dragnet that has ensnared nearly 5 million Communist Party cadres, who have been investigated since the 18th Party Congress in 2012, according to data from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the highest supervisory body, as of April 2022. Of that number 723,000 were found to have breached party regulations and 644,000 received some kind of party sanction.

The pace of the investigation and meting out punishments appears to be increasing, with 405,000 officials sanctioned in the first three quarters 2023, according to the CCDI.