After nearly 10 months since falling from power, former vice minister of the Chinese Communist Party’s Ministry of Justice, Liu Zhiqiang, has been officially charged. Over the past decade, there have been a total of five ministers at the Ministry of Justice, with three of them being implicated in corruption scandals, including Liu Zhiqiang and the three fallen ministers.
According to the news from the Supreme People’s Procuratorate of the Chinese Communist Party on February 11, the investigation into the case of Liu Zhiqiang, former member of the party committee and vice minister of the Ministry of Justice, for alleged bribery has concluded. Upon designation by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the prosecution review of the case will be conducted by the Wuhu City Procuratorate of Anhui Province. Recently, the Wuhu City Procuratorate has filed charges against Liu Zhiqiang with the Wuhu Intermediate People’s Court concerning this case.
The indictment by the prosecution alleges that Liu Zhiqiang utilized his positions as the director of the International Cooperation Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, vice governor of Qinghai, director of the Public Security Department, member of the party committee and vice minister of the Ministry of Justice, and member of the National Narcotics Control Commission to seek benefits for others, illegally accepting wealth from others in exceptionally large amounts, and should be held accountable for the crime of accepting bribes.
Liu Zhiqiang officially came under investigation on April 30 last year; on October 22, it was officially announced that he had been expelled from the party, had his benefits revoked, and had been transferred to the judiciary.
Public records show that Liu Zhiqiang was born in July 1963 in Juancheng, Shandong, and had a long career in the public security system.
From 2004 to 2012, Liu Zhiqiang successively served as the deputy director and director of the Foreign Affairs Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party’s Ministry of Public Security, and director of the International Cooperation Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security. In June 2012, he was transferred to vice governor of Qinghai Province and director of the provincial Public Security Department. In January 2016, he returned to Beijing to assume the position of member of the party committee and vice minister of the Chinese Communist Party’s Ministry of Justice until he was dismissed in June 2023.
It is worth noting that during his time at the Ministry of Justice, Liu Zhiqiang had interactions with the three former ministers of justice who have been implicated in corruption cases. These three individuals are Wu Aiying, who served as minister from June 2005 to February 2017, Fu Zhenghua, who served as minister from March 2018 to April 2020, and Tang Yijun, who served as minister from April 2020 to January 2023. Tang Yijun fell from power on April 2 last year, and Liu Zhiqiang was investigated at the end of April.