reports Xinhua<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe two men were among a group of 36 people charged with similar crimes.<\/p>\n
Liu Han’s sentencing is believed to be part of a wider corruption crackdown linked to Zhou’s network.<\/p>\n
The court verdict stated that, among other things, Liu Han and his group had “in an organised fashion obtained financial gains via illegal activities”.<\/p>\n
They had also on multiple occasions “committed murder, harm and illegal detention”.<\/p>\n
The verdict stated they relied on “the cover-ups and collusion of government employees” to illegally control gaming machines in Guanghan in Sichuan province.<\/p>\n
Liu, who is the former head of mining conglomerate Sichuan Hanlong Group, was ranked 148th on Forbes’ list of the richest Chinese business people in 2012.<\/p>\n
His former company once tried to take over Australian miner Sundance Resources Ltd.<\/p>\n
Chinese state media said previously that the Sichuan-based gang had had strong political ties that played a role in Liu Han’s appointment as a delegate in Sichuan’s political advisory body.<\/p>\n
In recent months, several top officials from Sichuan province linked to Zhou Yongkang have come under scrutiny.<\/p>\n
Mr Zhou was the party secretary in Sichuan province before becoming head of China’s Public Security Ministry in 2003.<\/p>\n
In April, China announced it had removed from office Guo Yongxiang, a former Sichuan vice-governor, and that Sichuan’s former deputy party chief Li Chuncheng was being investigated for bribery.<\/p>\n
Speculation has swirled for months that Mr Zhou is being investigated for corruption, although none of the rumours have been confirmed officially.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Liu Han, a Chinese tycoon believed to have links to China’s former security chief Zhou Yongkang, has been sentenced to death. A Hubei court has found Liu Han and his brother Liu Wei guilty of “organising and leading mafia-style crime and murder”,\u00a0reports Xinhua. The two men were among a group of 36 people charged with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":20394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-20392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}