On May 17, Yang Keqin, former chief prosecutor of the Jilin Provincial Procuratorate of the Communist Party of China, was sentenced to 13 years in prison for “accepting bribes. (composite photo)
Yang Keqin, former chief of the Jilin Provincial Procuratorate, was sentenced to 13 years in prison for “accepting bribes”. Previously, it was reported that Yang Keqin’s fall was related to the case of Liu Xiyong, the husband of CCTV hostess Liu Fangfei and a Hong Kong businessman, who was tortured to death to extract a confession.
On the morning of May 17, the Shijiazhuang Intermediate Court in Hebei Province announced that Yang Keqin had taken a bribe of over 46.35 million yuan and was sentenced to 13 years in prison for “accepting bribes”. This is the first time Yang Keqin appeared in the public eye after his fall. The news footage shows him with graying hair, pleading guilty in court.
Yang Keqin, 63, has long worked in the political and legal system. He worked in the Political and Legal Committee of the Anhui Provincial Party Committee in his early years and then moved to Beijing to the Central Political and Legal Committee. he was parachuted into Jilin in January 2012 to serve as the prosecutor general of the Jilin Provincial Procuratorate until his fall in July 2019.
On the eve of his fall, Yang Keqin frequently went to Beijing for self-preservation. At that time, several people had been investigated within the Jilin procuratorate system, including Wu Changzhi (investigated in November 2018), former deputy procurator of the Jilin procuratorate, and Xie Maotian (investigated in April 2019), both of whom were close associates of Yang Keqin.
On July 17, 2019, the State Supervision Commission of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection announced that Yang Keqin, the procurator general of the Jilin Provincial Procuratorate, was suspected of serious disciplinary violations and was under investigation. Yang Keqin became the first provincial procuratorate “hand” to be investigated in office since the 18th Congress.
The official reason for Yang Keqin’s investigation was not announced at the time, but some sources said he was related to the death of Liu Xiyong, the owner of Hong Kong’s Grand Hyatt Hotel.
Liu Xiyong was the husband of CCTV hostess Liu Fangfei, who disappeared at the airport in September 2016 after flying from Hong Kong to Beijing. In November of the same year, Liu Xiyong was accused of defrauding ICBC Asia of more than 200 million Hong Kong dollars in loans and was wanted by a Hong Kong court for failing to appear in court for his trial. Liu Xiyong’s family searched for him until news of his strange death broke in 2017.
In March 2017, the Communist authorities informed Liu Xiyong’s family of his death. According to the Ministry of Public Security’s autopsy report, Liu Xiyong was tortured and abused before his death; he suffered seven fractures in his sternum and ribs and died of asphyxiation due to pressure on his mouth and nose, among other factors.
According to the autopsy report, Liu Xiyong was tortured and abused before his death. However, Liu Xiyong’s death during the interrogation was so strange that it was rumored to be related to corruption in the CCP’s political and legal system, and was even described as a replica of the “Haywood death case”.
According to the Hong Kong media, Liu Xiyong’s death was linked to corruption in the CCP’s political and legal system, including the former Politburo Standing Committee members Li Lanqing and Liu Yunshan, former Supreme Procuratorate Prosecutor Jia Chunwang, and a large number of senior officials in the political and legal system, including the Supreme Procurator General.
In July 2017, Zhao Bozhong, deputy procurator general of the Yanbian Procuratorate in Jilin Province, procurator Xu Xuezhe and nine others, who allegedly caused Liu Xiyong’s death, were indicted on charges of extorting confessions through torture. On September 7 of the same year, the Tianjin No. 1 Intermediate Court held a hearing on the case.
According to the court’s indictment, eight prosecutors were charged with “extorting a confession by torture,” two of whom were involved in “intentional injury,” and the ninth, a prosecutor in charge of interrogations, was charged with “dereliction of duty. The ninth person, the prosecutor in charge of the interrogation, was charged with “dereliction of duty.
It is worth mentioning that among the nine prosecutors involved in the Liu Xiyong case, two of Yang Keqin’s deputies – Wu Changzhi and Xie Maotian – were included.
In addition, Yang Keqin himself is a former member of Zhou Yongkang’s staff. During Zhou’s tenure as deputy secretary of the Political and Legal Committee in 2002 and as secretary of the Committee in 2007, Yang Keqin was Zhou’s direct subordinate and the two worked together for nearly 10 years.
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