Ex-Yunnan Party chief removed from post

Disciplinary commission says official accepted huge bribes, took advantage of his position

The former Party chief of Yunnan province has been expelled from the Party and removed from his post, and his case was handed over to judicial authorities for further investigation, the Party's graft-fighting watchdog announced on Tuesday.

Bai Enpei, 68, who was also the former vice-chairman of the Environment Protection and Resources Conservation Committee of the National People's Congress of China, was found to have taken advantage of his post to seek profits for others and to have accepted huge bribes, according to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China.

The commission said that Bai's activities seriously violated Party discipline and might have broken criminal law, so the case has been transferred to judicial authorities.

Bai, who graduated from Northwest Polytechnical University, began work in 1972 in a diesel engine plant in Yan'an, Shaanxi province, and started his career in public service as a local government official in Yan'an in 1983.

In 1992, he began serving as deputy Party chief of the Inner Mongolia autonomous regional committee. Between 1997 and 2001, he held several high-ranking positions in Qinghai province, including governor of the province and the province's Party chief.

Bai was appointed to serve as Party chief of Yunnan province in 2001.

He was born in the village of Yuanjiagou in Qingjian county, Shaanxi province. The village is noted for being home to a host of high-ranking officials, including four provincial governors and eight officials at deputy ministerial level.

The disciplinary commission announced in August that Bai had been placed under investigation.

A September report by paper.cn said he was the first official from the village to be "punished".

It said Bai, as a primary school student, once drank the contents of an ink mixing bowl after a senior told him anyone who could drink the ink would be smart and become a high-ranking official in the future.

Bai didn't hesitate to drink the ink, the report said.

The whistleblower in Bai's case was Yang Weijun, a 92-year-old retired official from Yunnan province, who began writing tipoff letters to the disciplinary commission from 2008.

In the letters, Yang claimed a 60 percent share in a large lead-zinc mine in Yunnan province with an estimated value of 500 billion yuan ($81 billion) was sold in 2008 to a mining tycoon in Sichuan province, who paid only 1 billion yuan. Bai gave the green light to the deal.

An April report by Caijing magazine said the tycoon was Liu Han, former chairman of Hanlong Group, the largest private enterprise in Sichuan. The report suggested Liu also had links to Zhou Yongkang, China's ex-security chief.

There have also been online posts criticizing Bai's wife, Zhang Huiqing, a former waitress, who has been gradually promoted to Party chief of the Yunnan Grid Power Company.