Wife, son of former senior Chinese leader jailed for graft

BEIJING – A Chinese court on Wednesday jailed the wife and a son of a former senior politician sentenced to life in prison a year ago for corruption amid an ongoing anti-graft campaign.

The fall of Zhou Yongkang and his family is one of most powerful examples in recent years of how families of Chinese politicians who used their positions to enrich themselves can fall spectacularly once their power has dissipated.

A former security chief and member of the ruling Communist Party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee, Zhou was the highest-level ex-official to fall in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign launched in 2012.

State broadcaster CCTV said a court in the central city of Yichang sentenced Zhou’s son, Zhou Bin, to 18 years in prison for taking 222 million yuan ($34 million) in bribes and running an illegal business trading in restricted commodities.

The court confiscated Zhou Bin’s illicit gains and levied fines against him totalling of 350 million ($53 million), CCTV said.

The same court announced on Wednesday on its official microblogging site that Zhou Yongkang’s wife, Jia Xiaoye, will serve nine years for taking bribes. She was fined 1 million yuan ($150,000).

Both Jia and Zhou told the court they would not appeal the verdicts, according to the reports.

Zhou Yongkang retired in 2012 but came under investigation the following year and was convicted in a closed-door trial last year on charges of taking bribes, abusing power and intentionally leaking state secrets.