Third Kunming Party chief faces probe
Gao Jinsong, the Party chief in Kunming, Yunnan province, has been placed under investigation for suspected “serious discipline violations”, the Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection has announced.
The move comes after two of his predecessors were investigated for alleged corruption in the past year, according to a report in the Beijingbased online financial magazine Caixin.
Gao, 52, was appointed Party chief in August after his predecessor, Zhang Tianxin, a provinciallevel official, was downgraded to county level for violating the Party’s rules, according to the CCDI.
Another former Party chief of the city, Qiu He, was detained last month for suspected violations of Party discipline.
Between 2008 and last year, Gao served as mayor and deputy secretary in Yuxi and Party chief in Qujing, both in Yunnan, before becoming Kunming’s Party chief. Caixin said he is suspected of offering bribes to Bai Enpei, Yunnan’s former Party secretary, who was investigated for alleged corruption last August. Caixin quoted some Yunnan officials as saying that Bai allegedly abused his power to help corrupt local officials gain promotion in return for huge bribes.
The officials are reported to have said Bai and his wife, Zhang Huiqing, admitted their crimes and gave investigators information that implicated some officials in Yunnan.
In March, Qiu, a former deputy head of the Party’s Provincial Committee in Yunnan, was placed under investigation for alleged serious violations of Party discipline and laws, a euphemism for corruption. He was reported to have been taken away from a hotel in Beijing after attending the final meeting of the annual session of the National People’s Congress. The allegations against him are connected with urban development, according to a source close to the anticorruption authorities.