In China, a former senior official was sentenced to death in a major case brought under President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign. The Changzhou People's Court found that Yang Youlin, who served in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, accepted bribes worth 2.2 billion yuan ($324 million) between 1993 and 2023.
The court stated in its ruling that Yang accepted the bribes in exchange for assistance in matters such as project contracting, commercial activities, land allocation, and working capital. The former official was also convicted of embezzlement, bribery, misuse of public funds, abuse of power, and money laundering.
Yang Youlin, seen in the courtroom wearing a navy blazer, expressed his guilt and remorse in his final statement. After public hearings held over two days in March and April, attended by more than 30 people, the court handed down the death sentence.
In addition to the sentence, the court ordered the confiscation of all of Yang's assets and the recovery of the full 2.2 billion yuan he obtained through bribery. The ruling stands as one of the highest-profile outcomes of China's anti-corruption operations.
Other senior officials in China have received death sentences for corruption in recent years. In 2021, Lai Xiaomin, party secretary of a state-owned company, was executed for bribery and polygamy, and in 2024, Inner Mongolian local official Li Jianping was executed after being convicted of embezzlement and bribery. Zhang Zhongsheng from Shanxi, who was sentenced to death in 2018 for taking over 1 billion yuan in bribes, had his sentence commuted to a suspended death sentence and life imprisonment in 2021 after appeal.
