BEIJING, 18 August 2004 — Chinese authorities have detained the deputy chief of the Beijing Transport Bureau who has been under investigation for massive fraud linked to huge infrastructure projects for the city’s 2008 Olympics, state media reported yesterday.
The anti-graft bureau applied to the Beijing People’s Prosecutorate for a warrant for Bi Yuxi’s arrest on Friday, the China Times reported. Authorities are expected to make a decision on whether Bi will be charged within a week, the report said.
Bi, who is also head of the major road construction company Capital Road Development, allegedly received some 60 million yuan ($7.3 million) in bribes and kickbacks from 1994 to 2003 while managing road construction in Beijing, an earlier China Times report said.
If his case goes to court, it would be the biggest corruption case to hit the capital since former mayor and Politburo member Chen Xitong was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 1998 for a development-related corruption scandal. It would also be the largest graft case in Beijing.
since President Hu Jintao came to power last year promising to fight the scourge. Senior members of Bi’s company are also alleged to have taken bribes. Yesterday’s report, quoting unnamed sources, said that the arrest of Bi’s former deputy at Capital Road, Jin Demin, had been approved and that the contractor who allegedly bribed Bi was arrested last month. Authorities have also taken action against several other senior officials from Capital, the report said, without elaborating. Bi, who has been stripped of his Communist Party membership, was placed under investigation in April when investigators found some 10 million yuan in cash in his Beijing home. In 1999 Bi was appointed to head the newly formed Capital Road, which was charged with the construction of eight major highways surrounding Beijing. The make-over of Beijing’s roads has been key to the city’s efforts to modernize infrastructure ahead of the Beijing Olympics. The case has come to light after the National Audit Office reported in June that 109 million yuan earmarked for the organizing committee of the Beijing Olympics had been misused to build new apartments for sports officials.
