BEIJING — A Chinese court sentenced the former head of one of the country’s three major state-owned phone carriers to 16 years in prison Tuesday on charges of accepting bribes and abusing his authority, part of leader Xi Jinping’s politically-tinged anti-corruptionof Chinese officials and executives of state-owned companies in a long-running crackdown on embezzlement, taking bribes and other misbehavior.
Li Guohua, formerly general manager of China Unicom, was sentenced by the Intermediate People’s Court in the eastern city of Qingdao, almost 15 months after the ruling Communist Party’s disciplinary body placed him under investigation. He was also fined 6 million yuan and forced to return the roughly 45 million yuan that he received in bribes, with interest, the court said.
While “the amount of bribes Li Guohua accepted was particularly huge and the abuse of power was particularly serious,” he confessed to his crimes, aided in the investigation and showed contrition, earning himself a relatively lighter sentence, the court said. In such non-violent cases where defendants confess and cooperate, they may be entitled to sentence reductions of a further 20-50%.