A military tribunal has reportedly sentenced China’s former top general Guo Boxiong to life in prison for taking bribes.
Image: Guo Boxiong
Xinhua News Agency reported that Guo had also been stripped of his rank and forced to hand over all his assets to the state government.
He held the position of vice chairman of the Central Military Commission led by president and ruling Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, and had once been one of 25 members of the party’s Politburo [China’s top decision-making body].
The former general’s trial was believed to be China’s highest-level prosecution of a military figure in decades.
Guo’s former immediate subordinate on the commission, Gen. Xu Caihou, was also facing prosecution when he died of cancer in March last year.
According to reports, the retired People’s Liberation Army (PLA) general, confessed to taking $12.3 million in bribes.
Xinhua, citing a statement from the PLA’s military procuratorate said that Guo was additionally found to “have taken the advantage of his position to assist the promotion and relocation of other people.”
Guo stepped down from the Central Military Commission (CMC), having served between 2002 to 2012. His jail sentence was announced today July 25.
Guo was born in Liquan County, Shaanxi province. In August 1958, Guo who was 16 years old at the time and hand just finished middle school, got employed at a military factory in Xingping, Shaanxi province.
The young man who would later rise to the position of a general, joined the People’s Liberation Army in 1961. Within a period of two years, he joined the Communist Party of China.
Guo was trained at China’s National Defense University and the Xi’an Army Academy in People’s Liberation Army Military Academy where he graduated.
