Corrupt couple's trial opens
By Cai Xiong (China Daily)
Updated: 2004-09-09 02:13

A couple suspected of having been involved in China's biggest corruption case are on trial in Zhongshan city after being nabbed by police in Thailand.

The Intermediate People's Court of Zhongshan, Guangdong Province, opened a public hearing on Tuesday on the country's biggest corruption case.

The defendants, Chen Manxiong and Chen Qiuyuan, are accused of embezzling and misappropriating public funds valued at more than 420 million yuan (US$51 million)between 1993 and 1995.

Chen Manxiong, 44, used to be a manager of the Zhongshan Industrial Development Co Ltd, while his wife Chen Qiuyuan was the company's lawyer.

The court has yet to pass rule on the case, but the two have already admitted their guilt.

The Chens used to be fanatical gamblers and lost a large amount of public funds in casinos in Macao, bordering the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone.

To repay their heavy gambling debts, the couple connived with two officials in charge of granting loans at the Zhongshan Branch of Bank of China to defraud bank loans valued at more than 427.5 million yuan (US$51.9 million) in 48 separate cases between 1993 and 1995.

The case was regarded as the biggest corruption case that has ever taken place on the Chinese mainland.

And the two bank officials surnamed Feng and Chi were jailed in the previous year.

But the couple escaped to Thailand before the scandal was exposed in June 1995.

The couple took public funds worth 8.8 million yuan (more than US$1 million) with them when they fled.

Interpol China issued a notice to their overseas counterparts to help them find and capture the couple.

The Chens then changed their names and illegally purchased Thai passports and settled in Chiang Mai, a tourist city in the Southeast Asian nation.

The couple were detained by Thai police because they were suspected of being illegal immigrants and using fake passports in November 2000.

And they were later sentenced to jail terms of 13 years 10 months and 11 year 4 months in Thailand.

The couple were extradited to China in December 2002.

The Chens are not the first to have been extradited to Guangdong Province, which borders the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions for prosecution this year.

In April, Yu Zhendong, a former director of the Kaiping Branch of Bank of China was also extradited from the United States to Guangdong for prosecution with the help of Interpol China.

Yu, who was suspected of taking large bribes and misusing public funds, escaped to the United States in 2002.