Former bank president given suspended death sentence

The former president of China CITIC Bank Corporation Limited was given a suspended death by a court in Shandong province on Friday for accepting bribes of about 1 billion yuan ($137 million).

The Intermediate People's Court in Jinan, capital of Shandong province, announced the death penalty with a two-year reprieve to Sun Deshun, saying that Sun will not be commuted or granted parole after the probation.

In China, generally, criminals given a suspended death penalty will face life imprisonment if they have no new crimes during the two-year probation. If they continue performing well, they will obtain further sentence reduction.

The penalty for Sun, however, means that he should spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Sun was also deprived of his political rights for life, and all his personal assets were confiscated, according to the court.

His illicit gains and relevant interests were turned over to the national treasury, it added.

From 2003 to 2019, Sun was found to have taken advantage of his positions in the country's banking system, including president of the Bank of Communications Beijing branch as well as vice-president and president of the China CITIC Bank, to assist enterprises in matters such as gaining loan approvals, and then accepted bribes in return, it said.

The amount of the involved bribes exceeded 9.79 billion yuan, it added.

"Sun's behavior has constituted the crime of bribery, with extremely large of bribes, which has brought extremely negative effects to the society and caused huge losses for the interests of the country and the people," the court said.

"Sun should be sentenced to death, but considering he confessed to the crime and voluntarily returned the illicit gains, we gave him the death with a two-year reprieve," it said.

"Given the seriousness of the crime, we decided to let him serve the prison term for life without parole or sentence reduction after the probation," it added.

Sun, 65, graduated from Dongbei University of Finance And Economics in East China's Liaoning province. He worked in the country's banking system for more than three decades.

He was placed under disciplinary and supervisory investigation in March 2020 and was prosecuted two months later. In February 2022, the court publicly heard Sun's case.