On September 23, 2022, the Intermediate People’s Court of Changchun City, Jilin Province publicly pronounced the case of Sun Lijun, former member of the Party Committee and vice minister of the Ministry of Public Security, accepting bribes, manipulating the securities market and illegally possessing guns. The defendant Sun Lijun was sentenced to death for accepting bribes, suspended for two years, deprived of his political rights for life, and confiscated all his personal property. After his death sentence was suspended for two years, he was sentenced to life imprisonment without commutation or parole. He was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment for the crime of manipulating the securities market and fined one million yuan. He was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for the crime of illegal possession of firearms. He decided to execute the death penalty, suspended for two years, deprived of his political rights for life, and confiscated all his personal property. After his death sentence was suspended for two years, he was sentenced to life imprisonment according to law, without commutation or parole. The proceeds and fruits of Sun Lijun’s bribery crime shall be recovered according to law and turned over to the state treasury.
It was found through trial that from 2001 to April 2020, the defendant Sun Lijun took advantage of his position as deputy director of the Foreign Affairs Department of Shanghai Municipal Health Bureau, director of the Comprehensive Business Department of the Foreign Affairs Office of Shanghai Municipal People’s Government, deputy director of the General Office of the Ministry of Public Security, director of the Domestic Security Bureau, and member of the Party Committee and deputy minister of the Ministry of Public Security, as well as the convenient conditions for the formation of his authority and status, to provide assistance to the relevant units or individuals in matters such as enterprise management, job adjustment and case handling, and illegally accept property directly or through others. In the first half of 2018, at the request of others, Sun Lijun instructed the relevant personnel to influence the stock trading price and trading volume through centralized capital advantage and other ways to help others avoid losses of more than 145 million yuan. Sun Lijun also violated the regulations on gun control and illegally held two guns.
The Changchun Intermediate People’s Court held that the defendant Sun Lijun’s behavior constituted the crime of accepting bribes, manipulating the securities market and illegally holding guns. Sun Lijun received a huge amount of bribes. After accepting bribes, he sought job promotion and adjustment for many people, used his power to intervene in case handling, and intervened in normal economic activities in the fields of people’s livelihood such as medicine and finance. The circumstances of the crime were particularly serious and the social impact was particularly bad, causing particularly heavy losses to the interests of the country and the people. On the crime, he should be sentenced to death; Sun Lijun manipulated the securities market, and the circumstances were particularly serious; Illegal possession of guns, if the circumstances are serious, should also be punished according to law, and combined with the crime of accepting bribes. In view of the fact that Sun Lijun provided other clues to major cases after his arrival, which were verified to be true and made great contributions, and voluntarily confessed some of the bribery facts that the case-handling organ did not yet know, truthfully confessed all the criminal facts, and was able to plead guilty and repent, and actively cooperated with the pursuit. Most of the stolen money and fruits have been recovered to the case, which is a statutory and discretionary lighter punishment, and he may be sentenced to death without immediate execution. According to the facts and circumstances of Sun Lijun’s crime and the serious harm to the country and society, it was decided that after his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment at the expiration of the two-year suspension period, he was sentenced to life imprisonment without commutation or parole. The court then made the above judgment.
(CCTV reporter Yan Danni Zhang Sai)