On September 23, 2021, after two years, the Guiyang Intermediate People’s Court of Guizhou Province made a first-instance judgment on the bribery case of Yuan Renguo, the former chairman of Moutai Group!
This case, which has attracted much attention from society, has finally been settled.
Yuan Renguo’s bribery case has great political influence and high social attention, coupled with tight time, heavy tasks, and difficulty. How can the procuratorial organs complete the review task of the case with quality? How can we make the prosecution evidence meet a certain and sufficient standard?
The Supreme People’s Procuratorate recently disclosed the details of the case and brought us the answer.
In October 2018, the Guizhou Provincial Supervisory Commission filed an investigation into Yuan Renguo’s alleged violation of the law. During the handling of the case, more than 40 investigators counted 1,588 pieces of gold products, watches, jewelry, calligraphy, and paintings from Yuan’s home, many of which were rare items such as ivory, as well as a number of RMB, US dollars, and British pound cash. It took the staff a day and a night to complete the inventory.
The Guiyang People’s Procuratorate immediately dispatched key case-handling personnel from various departments and quickly established a task force. “This is a very complicated case. The time span is very long and the number of cases is very large.” The investigator said, “Although he (Yuan Renguo) only committed the crime of accepting bribes, his means of accepting bribes are more complicated. The entire case file is about 100 copies. “During the entire review and verification process, the personnel in this case repeatedly consulted and connected with the supervisory authority.
After review, it was found that the entire case file highlighted the fact that Yuan Renguo made use of the approval power of special resources to provide help to illegal dealers in the business of Moutai liquor in violation of regulations. From 1994 to the incident, Yuan Renguo received bribes of up to 110 million yuan.
In April 2019, the Guizhou Provincial Supervisory Committee transferred the case to the procuratorate for review and prosecution. Within 2 months from the acceptance of the case to the prosecution, the task force reviewed the evidence of the whole case one by one and formed a 370,000-word review transcript, with more than 25,000 characters. The 29 cases of bribery were analyzed one by one, and the circumstances of Yuan Renguo’s sentencing were carefully reviewed. The foreign currency and stolen goods he received were converted into RMB and included in the amount of bribery according to the exchange rate and valuation opinions.
“A lot of invisible work has been done.” The case investigator said, “This case should be able to be shown during the trial process. In the early stage, whether the work of the supervisory organ or the work of the public prosecution organ, both were done to the extreme.”
In September 2021, Yuan Renguo was sentenced to life imprisonment, deprived of political rights for life, and confiscated all his personal property. The property obtained from bribery was recovered according to law and turned over to the state treasury.
