Four senior city government officials, including Kaiping City's
Party chief, were sacked over illegal land leasing approvals in
Guangdong Province, both the Ministry of Supervision and Ministry
of Land and Resources said yesterday.
The ministries also exposed another nine land schemes across the
country at the news conference, China News Service reported
yesterday.
Zhao Ruizhang, former Party Secretary of Kaiping, was removed
from his post along with Li Xueming, deputy mayor of Kaiping, and
Shi Zhaoping, director of Kaiping's Development and Reform Bureau
after the city government illegally approved land deals that
amounted to 1,985 hectares from May 2002 to September 2005, the two
ministries told a news conference in Beijing.
Li, who was also expelled from the Party, has already been sent
to prosecutors for alleged economic crimes, the report said.
Yang Guangzhong, an official with Kaiping's government office
and former director of the city's Land and Resources Bureau, was
also sacked and received a year of probation in the Party, the
report said.
The Kaiping government was accused of illegally leasing farm
land belonging to collective organizations as state-owned property
and continued the illegal act during a nationwide crackdown on land
schemes by the central authority, the report said.
The city government also tried to cover up its actions with fake
reports when the two ministries started an investigation, the
report said.
The provincial Land and Resources Department said the illegal
approvals will be withdrawn. More than 1,500 hectares of land
should be returned to these collective organizations, the report
said.
Another 326.64 hectares should be returned to farm use since no
real estate projects have started on the land, the report cited the
department as saying.
(Shanghai Daily December 11, 2007)