Recently, mainland Chinese financial, supervisory, and judicial system insiders interviewed by the media have indicated that in the cases they are aware of, the official “corruption charges” involve arresting individuals without clarifying the facts, exaggerating the amounts involved, and retaliating in the political arena, all driven by power struggles.
In an interview with a Beijing financial industry official familiar with the prosecution system, Wu Huan (pseudonym) told a media outlet that since last year, there have been cases in the Chinese Communist Party’s financial sector where there are “corruption suspects without corruption.” He mentioned that individuals accused by authorities of corruption are found to have no clear whereabouts of the alleged embezzled funds, with many individuals being released after 3 to 6 months of detention and forced to sign non-appeal guarantees.
Wu Huan further stated, “The case of Bian Yuye, the former chairman of Jiangsu Dafeng Rural Commercial Bank accused of embezzling sixteen million yuan, is a clear example of this situation, purely a false accusation.”
In September last year, the Jiangsu Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection announced that Bian Yuye was suspected of serious violations of discipline and law and was under investigation. Bian Yuye was accused of embezzling over 15.9 million yuan. The case went to trial in a Zhangjiagang court in August of this year.
Investigative journalists Wu Yingjiao and Liu Hu revealed in a report that Bian Yuye had been taken away earlier and detained for 168 days at a detention center in Zhangjiagang. The investigative journalists disclosed that after the authorities examined Bian Yuye and his family’s assets, they did not find any profits made from the property transactions in question.
Currently, the case of Bian Yuye has entered the trial stage, with the above-mentioned investigation revealing financial audit results that led Wu Huan to categorize this case as an example of “false accusation.”
The prosecution accused Bian Yuye of colluding with others in manipulating property transactions in Beijing and Yancheng, causing banks to repurchase or lease at high prices, embezzling around 15.9 million yuan of public funds; and illegally lending out 35 million yuan. Defense lawyers have pleaded not guilty to both charges.
The investigative report pointed out that after examining Bian Yuye and his family’s accounts, properties, and financial management, the authorities did not find personal gains related to the two property transactions. The defense argued that the Beijing property was initially purchased by someone else as decided at a bank meeting and later repurchased at the original price; while the higher expenditure on the Yancheng property was related to seeking qualifications for operating branches in different locations. The defense believed that it is not sufficient to determine embezzlement based solely on price differentials in transactions.
The report also highlighted that after being detained for over three months, Bian Yuye’s breastfeeding daughter, Bian Jin, was notified to come in for “cooperative questioning” and was subsequently detained as well. The father and daughter were held in the same compound and could not meet for 35 days.
Bian Yuye claimed that the authorities showed him materials and videos of his daughter being detained and told him that his daughter’s fate depended on his confession. The defense lawyer explained that before his daughter was detained, Bian Yuye had insisted on not profiting from the property transactions; however, his statement changed afterward, leading to his eventual “confession.”
During his detention, Bian Yuye alleged facing physical abuse, cold penalties, sleep restrictions, and was asked to slap himself, with over 800 slaps administered at once. The defense questioned the methods of evidence collection in court and requested full interrogation videos. As for the financial and evidence disputes, there has been no public response from the investigating authority.
The investigative journalists Wu Yingjiao and Liu Hu are well-known independent investigative journalists in China who have faced accusations of “defamation” for exposing official corruption, sparking attention from China’s legal community and human rights networks, advocating for release of individuals.
An official within Tianjin’s supervisory system, Yu Min (pseudonym), stated that Tianjin has also witnessed cases where individuals at the district level and below were taken away on grounds of alleged embezzlement and bribery without clarifying the contents of the reports.
He mentioned, “In Tianjin, there have been multiple cases where individuals are arrested based on reports without clarifying the basic facts. They are mainly district-level or below officials, accused of embezzlement or bribery of several million yuan, but the authorities cannot trace the sources and destinations of the amounts, linking accusations without solid evidence. I know incidents in Hedong District and Nankai District; it’s essentially political retaliation, such as ‘you, as a district chief, arrest my people, and I’ll arrest yours’.”
Jiang Yuewen (pseudonym), a retired personnel from the Chinese judicial system, told the media that the phenomenon of retaliatory arrests in the financial sector is just the tip of the iceberg. He stated, “In the provincial bureaucratic system, these issues have persisted for a long time, and now it’s escalating, where if you took a bribe of tens of thousands, they’ll claim it’s millions; if you took millions, they say it’s tens of millions, exaggerating the amounts for the sole purpose of ousting their political opponents.”
According to Jiang Yuewen’s observations, officials at provincial and higher levels facing corruption charges have increased, involving actual bribery, buying and selling positions, as well as political and power struggle elements. He noted that the disputes over the amounts mentioned are not equivalent to charging individuals without obtaining the alleged amounts, reinforcing that the public often tends to believe corruption allegations without questioning the actual sums involved due to the privileged conditions of the Communist Party.
The Chinese Criminal Procedure Law stipulates that without other evidence beyond the defendant’s confession, guilt cannot be determined; the evidence for conviction must be definite, sufficient, and exclude reasonable doubt. The case of Bian Yuye awaits the judgment of the court. The flow of funds from the two property transactions, the process of obtaining confessions, and how the court reviews the defense’s request to access interrogation video recordings are still unanswered questions in this case.