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Telegraph.co.uk
17 October 2009

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Ethics in Policing

China corruption trial exposes

Huang Guobi lost her husband four years ago to gangsters who brutally dismembered him with machetes before beating her senseless.

When she took the case to her local police station, she found it was run by the nephew of the gang-leader. As she worked her way up the Chinese justice system, pleading for someone to bring the killers to account, she found each level riddled with corruption.

This week, however, 47-year-old Mrs Huang stood outside the Number Five Intermediate People's Court in downtown Chongqing, filled with anger and satisfaction. Around her, 300 other people, many with similar stories, stood waiting for justice to be done.

Inside, the first trial of China's largest-ever criminal investigation was under way, the culmination of five months of police work that has turned the city of Chongqing upside down.

The sweep began in June, when officers began to raid the city's illegal gun factories, seizing over 1,700 firearms. As their leads multiplied, however, the police widened their search. An operation that began with 3,000 policemen is now being conducted by 25,000 officers, as the city tries to rid itself of an insidious mafia network that stretches to the very highest levels of the Communist party.

So far, 4,893 suspected gangsters have been taken into custody, many of them city officials, including a former deputy police commissioner and the head of the city's Justice bureau, Wen Qiang. Mr Wen, who is suspected of having accumulated a fortune of over 100 million yuan (�10 million) in bribes, is said to have been the overall godfather of the city, a protective umbrella who shielded the gangs from the authorities.

The operation revealed the depths of corruption inside Chongqing's monumental police headquarters, with some Chinese reports suggesting that one-fifth of the city's police has been removed. Officers have revealed sudden morning meetings at which their colleagues were dramatically purged and led away in handcuffs.

Meanwhile, a small core of investigators have been taken "to a secret location" and "have all signed confidentiality agreements" so that no one knows where they will strike next, according to Chen Xiaohua, a Chongqing lawyer. Every policeman in the city has been reassigned a new beat to break up any patronage they may have enjoyed in their old patches.

As China has grown suddenly and dramatically wealthy, its gangs have returned. Today, however, the gangs are nameless, often hidden inside legitimate businesses, and with strong links to the government which almost wiped them out six decades ago. Their return, and their near universal infiltration of public offices, poses perhaps the greatest threat to the continuing rule of the Communist party. Across China, a deep public anger is boiling at the collusion between cadres and criminals.

"In fact, the police stations in Chongqing were actually the centre of the prostitution, gambling and drugs rackets," said Liu Liangli, a 35-year-old employee at a state company who was also waiting outside the court. "They would detain gangsters from time to time, and sometimes send them to prison, but the gangsters described it as going away for a holiday. The police and the mafia were buddies," he said.

Chongqing became the world's largest city in 1997, when a stroke of a mandarin's pen reclassified 31,000 square miles of Sichuan - an area into which you could fit London 47 times over - as a municipality. Beijing's goal was to create a modern megalopolis, a leading city for central China that would rival the riches of coastal cities such as Shanghai.

What it ended up with, however, was a Chinese version of Gotham: a sprawling industrial base perched on the steep cliffs above the Yangtze river, its grimy skyscrapers forever shrouded in fog. As Beijing poured more and more money into giant infrastructure projects to reverse the decay, it succeeded in feeding the gangs, which grew rich and cocksure.

"People who do not live here cannot imagine what goes on," said Liu Liangli, a 35-year-old employee at a state company who had joined the 300-strong crowd calling for justice outside the court house. "The gangs were shooting people down in the city centre in broad daylight or hacking them to death. Their victims could never report the cases to the police for fear of revenge," he added. One incident saw 100 gangsters attack passengers as they disembarked at the airport in the middle of the day. The police were too stunned to intervene.

For Mrs Huang, 47, there was no protection on the night when the local gang arrived at her house on the fringes of the city. "We had a dispute with a man named Zhao Wenxue, who said our trees were planted on his land. I refused to move them, and he hit me with a spade," she said.

Her husband, Tian Hongmo, knew nothing of the dispute when he returned from work. "He was in the back of the house washing his hands. I was arguing with three people in the front. Then another four people came along, holding machetes and bars. It was dark at the time, and my husband didn't have the chance to say a word before they slashed him across the back of his skull.

"I was so terrified I didn't know what to do. I felt too weak to move. I saw seven people crowded around him, hacking at him. He couldn't speak, I only heard his broken cries of help. I felt numb in my legs.I opened the door to shout out but my voice broke and was husky and low." Two other men, outside her house, threatened to mete out a similar fate to any neighbours who tried to fetch help. When the case finally came to trial, none of the neighbours dared to stand witness. One suspect was given a suspended death sentence and released. Another was given a mere six years. The remaining gangsters manager to flee.

Today, the police operation has succeeded in neutering Chongqing's underworld. The city's most notorious haunts, such as the Bright Spot Teahouse, a brothel in Yuzhong district, the Cloud Dream Pavilion, an illegal casino on the fifth floor of the World Trader's Hotel, and the White House nightclub, in the basement of the Marriott hotel, have all been closed. More than 65 luxury cars have been seized, including rows of Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Bentleys.

A heavy police presence, including golf buggy patrols along busy streets, has stopped the pimps. Many of the remaining gangsters have fled to other cities to lie low. "We used to have lots of rich people here, there were lots of luxury cars coming and going," said a waitress at Tao Ran Ju, a restaurant opposite an illegal casino where high rollers would drop millions of pounds each day. "But in the past week or so, business has collapsed. Now if we are half-full, we call that a good day."

Official figures show a 40 per cent reduction in crime in the past three months, compared with last year. "It could be even more than that," said Mr Liu. "We have not seen or heard of any overt criminality for months now, and that is unheard of in this city," he added.

The credit has gone to Bo Xilai, the former Trade minister who was sent out to govern the municipality. Mr Bo, who sits on China's ruling politburo, is said to be hopeful that his success in the city will catapult him into a leading role when the next generation of China's leaders take over in 2012. As an outsider, he was able to dismantle the police department, installing another outsider, Wang Lijun, to be his crusading police commissioner. The gangs have reportedly responded by putting a 12 million yuan bounty on Mr Wang's head.

The fight against gangs in Chongqing could be just the beginning of a wider strategy, with officials in Beijing keenly aware that other cities have their own mafias. "It is a pilot project in the plans for a nationwide push, adopted at the recent central leadership meeting," said Sidney Rittenberg, who has personally known every Chinese leader since Mao Tse-tung. "Beating back the worst of the large-scale corruption is an absolute necessity. They must show their determination."

Outside the Number Five courtroom, however, not everyone in the crowd is so optimistic. Yu Jingqing, a 72-year-old grandmother who lives nearby, expressed doubts that the ties between the government and the gangs have really been broken. "Look at Wen Qiang. He is the godfather, so why is he being put on trial outside the city? He will probably get off. Why was his brother not arrested. What about his son. What about his properties. Is he moving his wealth overseas? There are still plenty of criminals out there."

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Telegraph.co.uk17 October 2009

China corruption trial exposes

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Telegraph.co.uk
17 October 2009