Court to retry ex-official on housing deals

A case involving an ex-official convicted of bribery after paying only 70,000 yuan ($11,000) for two apartments worth more than 1 million yuan has been sent back to a lower court for retrial.

Xu Jiren, 60, a former official at a Beijing grain depot in the capital's Changping district, was originally sentenced in 2008 to 13 years in prison for bribery at the Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court, which ruled he used his position to buy the apartments for a much lower price.

The court said that Xu asked for two apartments from a construction company when it built houses for the depot's employees between February 1999 and November 2002.

Xu paid 69,000 yuan for an 81-sq-m apartment in Haidian district that was worth more than 370,000 yuan at the time, which he bought in the name of his son, the court said.

Later, Xu got another 150-sq-m apartment worth more than 640,000 yuan at the time without payment for a relative, the court said.

But Xu denied the charges, saying his purchases were made publicly and were legal market transactions.

"The depot set aside more than 50 apartments for employees in 1998, but 30 of them went unused. The unused ones, including my first apartment, went on sale to the public later, so my purchase was reasonable," Xu told the court.

"I also gave the residual payment, about 940,000 yuan, to the construction corporation for my second apartment in 2005 as well," he added.

After the lower court ruled against him, Xu appealed to the Beijing High People's Court in 2009 and then the Supreme People's Court, which reviewed Xu's appeal and asked the high court to retry the case on Oct 25, 2013.

The high court then overturned the original verdict and sent it back to the intermediate court for a rehearing.

Yang Weidong, a law professor at the Chinese Academy of Governance, said that the key for the case is to clarify whether Xu bought the two apartments at a price that was apparently lower than the market price.

Property evaluation involves many factors, such as how big it is and where it is located, and the housing purchase policy at the time should be also involved, he added.

caoyin@chinadaily.com.cn