On October 16, 2024, after four and a half months of the trial, Wang Xuefeng, former Deputy Director of the Standing Committee of the Hebei Provincial People’s Congress and former Secretary of the Tangshan Municipal Committee, was sentenced to 18 years in prison for accepting bribes totaling 88 million yuan.
The Intermediate People’s Court in Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province, publicly pronounced the verdict of Wang Xuefeng, former member of the Party Committee and Deputy Director of the Standing Committee of the Hebei Provincial People’s Congress, for charges of bribery and using influence to accept bribes on October 16.
According to the court, Wang Xuefeng was sentenced to 15 years in prison and fined 8 million yuan for the crime of accepting bribes; sentenced to 5 years in prison and fined 400,000 yuan for the crime of using influence to accept bribes. The court decided to combine the offenses, imposing a total of 18 years in prison and a fine of 8.4 million yuan.
From 1999 to 2022, Wang Xuefeng, while holding positions such as Secretary-General of the Hebei Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection, Deputy Secretary, Executive Deputy Secretary, Director of the Hebei Provincial Supervision Department, Secretary of the Tangshan Municipal Committee, Deputy Director of the Standing Committee of the Hebei Provincial People’s Congress, and Chairman of the Finance and Economic Committee, used his convenience and power from his positions to directly or through others accept a total of more than 84.07 million yuan in cash and assets.
From 2018 to 2022, Wang Xuefeng used the convenience and power from his position as the former Deputy Director of the Standing Committee of the Hebei Provincial People’s Congress before retirement to accept a total of over 4.11 million yuan in bribes.
The court stated that after Wang Xuefeng was arrested, he truthfully confessed his crimes, voluntarily disclosed most of the bribery and influence peddling cases that the investigating authorities had not yet known, and his crime of using influence to accept bribes constituted surrender. He also provided clues to solve other major cases, which were verified to be true; he confessed and returned illicit gains. As a result, he received a lighter punishment, leading to the aforementioned verdict.
Wang Xuefeng, 69 years old, a native of Yongnian, Handan, Hebei, became known as the “first tiger” in Hebei after the 18th National Congress of the CPC. He embarked on his career in April 1979 and switched to the discipline inspection system in August 2001.
In August 2010, Wang Xuefeng became Secretary of the Tangshan Municipal Committee; in January 2013, he became Deputy Director of the Hebei Provincial People’s Congress, reaching the rank of deputy provincial level. In January 2018, with the reshuffling of the Hebei Provincial People’s Congress, 63-year-old Wang Xuefeng stepped down.
On January 6, 2023, Wang Xuefeng was officially announced to have fallen from power; he was arrested on July 25 of the same year; and on December 20, the Taiyuan Prosecutor’s Office in Shanxi Province submitted an indictment to the Taiyuan Intermediate Court. The first-instance trial began on May 31 this year.