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Corruption in China
ChinaPolitics

Former chairman of luxury liquor firm Kweichow Moutai sentenced to life in prison for bribery

  • Yuan Renguo accepted over US$17 million in bribes and was given a ‘light’ sentence for confessing and volunteering information, court says
  • In a separate case, former police official expelled from Communist Party ‘never really had any ideals or conviction, was never loyal to the party’

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Yuan Renguo, former chairman of Kweichow Moutai Group, has been jailed for life. Photo: Xinhua
William Zheng
The former chairman of China’s biggest liquor company, Kweichow Moutai, was sentenced on Thursday to life in prison for taking bribes, state news agency Xinhua reported.
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Yuan Renguo was sentenced by the Intermediate People’s Court in Guiyang, in southern Guizhou province, for accepting cash and property worth more than 112.9 million yuan (US$17.48 million) to help others obtain Mao-tai baijiu dealerships when he was a senior figure at the company between 1994 and 2018, the report said.
Kweichow Moutai is best-known for Mao-tai baijiu, a fiery drink of choice for Communist Party founders, including Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. Its revolutionary history has made the spirit a symbol of wealth and power among political and business elites in China. Given its iconic status, the distribution rights for Moutai can cost as much as millions of yuan.

The court said Yuan was given a “light” sentence since he had confessed to his crimes and volunteered information not known to the prosecutors during the investigation.

Yuan, 65, became chairman of Moutai in 2011 but quietly resigned in 2018. He was placed under investigation in May the following year and was expelled from the party the same month.

In an anti-corruption documentary aired on state television in January 2020 party investigators in Guizhou said Yuan’s wife and children had made more than 230 million yuan profit from illegally reselling Moutai since 2004.

The documentary also said Yuan’s corruption case was related to the investigation of Wang Xiaoguang, former Guizhou vice-governor, and Wang Sanyun, a former party chief of neighbouring Gansu province.
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