Foreword
In 1978, after the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee, my country implemented the basic national policy of reform and opening up, and the coastal areas became the first areas to benefit. With the continuous deepening of reform and opening up, our country's economy has developed rapidly.
However, while the economy is developing rapidly, criminal activities such as smuggling, trafficking, theft and embezzlement of national property are becoming increasingly frequent. Many party members and cadres cannot adhere to their principles, lose themselves in money and power, and step into the abyss of crime.
Wang Zhong, the former secretary of the Haifeng County Party Committee in Guangdong Province, was one of the typical representatives of corruption at that time. On January 17, 1983, with the sound of a gunshot, Wang Zhong was executed.
He was the first county party secretary to be executed for corruption after the reform and opening up. His corruption had obvious characteristics of the times and had an extremely bad impact at the time. Therefore, this case was also called "the first anti-corruption case during the reform and opening up". case".
Chen Yun, then the first secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, attached great importance to this case and once personally intervened and supervised the case.
Desperate for profit, he went astray
In 1947, Wang Zhong became a member of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Because of his outstanding performance in the Liberation War and his certain writing skills, he quickly transferred from the frontal battlefield to rear work.
In 1950, Wang Zhong officially retired from the army and participated in local land reform work. His good performance in land reform work made his career soar, and he soon served as deputy secretary of the district committee.
After 20 years in the officialdom, in the early 1970s, Wang Zhong's thoughts slowly changed with the changes in the environment.
As a member of the County Party Committee’s Political and Legal Committee at that time, Wang Zhong became corrupt in his life style. He often uses his power to specialize, and while using his power to embezzle public property, he also gives a green light for the convenience of his own life. This kind of thinking puts him on a path of no return.
In February 1976, Wang Zhong served as Secretary of the Haifeng County Party Committee. In August 1981, he was transferred to Deputy Director of the Political and Legal Committee of the Shantou Prefectural Committee. It was during this period that he completely lost himself in money.
As the spring breeze of reform and opening up took the lead in Guangdong's coastal areas, many foreign funds and commodities moved inland from here. Under the impact of a large amount of money and interests, Wang Zhong was gradually no longer satisfied with the current quality of life, and he began to extend his black hands to the country's property.
Haifeng County is located on the front line of reform and opening up. Thanks to policy support, the economy has experienced tremendous development.
However, after 1978, a large amount of smuggled materials began to appear in Haifeng County. In order to curb this criminal behavior, the local police stepped up their crackdown. As the operation continued to deepen, the Haifeng County police quickly confiscated a huge amount of smuggled materials. Smuggled goods, these materials are piled up in mountains, and there is no relevant management policy.
Because Wang Zhong happened to be in charge of this area of business, he used his power to take possession of the stolen money and stolen goods through various means.
Starting in July 1981, in just one year, Wang Zhong took away a large amount of anti-smuggling materials from the Public Security Bureau and anti-smuggling checkpoints for various reasons such as "price samples" and "taking care of leaders."
According to statistics, Wang Zhong took away a total of 263 watches, 17 radio cassette players, 1 TV set, 2 electric fans and a large number of other items. These items were worth 58,141 yuan after being converted based on local prices;
In the early 1980s, the salary of ordinary people in China was only a dozen yuan a month, and more than 50,000 yuan was already an astronomical figure.
Wang Zhong, who was increasingly greedy, had no fear. He found that the power in his hands could bring a lot of benefits, so he began to turn the power given to him by the party and the state into a tool for his personal gain.
Haifeng is located on the coast of Guangdong, with extremely convenient land and sea transportation. With the implementation of the opening-up policy, the connection with Hong Kong and Macao has become increasingly close.
After 1978, more and more people from Haifeng went to Hong Kong to visit relatives, which also made the tasks of the relevant review departments more and more heavy. Many applications for family visits required review for a month or even several months before they were approved.
One day in October 1979, a local broadcaster gave Wang Zhong a 17-inch black and white TV . The purpose of his doing this was to get his report to visit relatives in Hong Kong approved as soon as possible. After Wang Zhong received the gift, he personally gave instructions to the county public security bureau to open a back door for the briber. After
tasted the sweetness, Wang Zhong got out of control and began to receive and ask for a large number of expensive items such as televisions, tape recorders, refrigerators, etc. It once became an unspoken rule to ask Wang Zhong for help.
became more and more audacious
because he continued to steal smuggled materials confiscated from the anti-smuggling warehouse and collected a large amount of bribery items. For a time, Wang Zhong's home turned into a small warehouse filled with a dazzling array of goods.
How to store and sell these dirty things? How to steal items continuously? It has become a question that Wang Zhong thinks about every day. There is no doubt that if he puts all his energy on to serve the people and , then he will do a great job, but his energy is not used on the right path.
In order to solve this thorny problem, Wang Zhong took the whole family together to find a way. Under his leadership, the family formed a huge economic crime network that integrated theft and sales of stolen goods.
Wang Zhong’s wife Chen Qiaolan voluntarily resigned from her job in 1958. At that time, the state had a policy that stipulated that such personnel could be rearranged to work as needed, but the requirements were relatively strict.
Wang Zhong used his power to not only implement the work of his wife Chen Qiaolan, but also arranged for her to serve as the deputy director of the County Cultural Center, and later transferred her to work in the Shantou Civil Affairs Office. Several of his children also entered government departments under his careful arrangement and held corresponding official positions.
It can be said that nepotism was used to perfection by Wang Zhong. The purpose behind his actions was to make it easier to get money. An economic crime chain of stealing, concealing and selling private goods under the cover of official position was initially formed.
Wang Zhong obtained items illegally through theft and bribery. His wife Chen Qiaolan was responsible for hiding stolen goods. His son Wang Jiancheng resold stolen goods everywhere. The family was like a mature criminal group.
In order to facilitate the sale of stolen goods, Wang Zhong turned all available locations into trading venues. His home, office, or even a meeting place can be his trading venue.
On the evening of January 20, 1980, Wang Zhong’s son Wang Jiancheng was seized by the Industrial and Commercial Administration while smuggling a batch of goods to Shantou. Wang Zhong, who received the news, didn't panic and started thinking of countermeasures as soon as he got home.
Wang Zhong, a cunning old man, decided to play a trick. He told his son Wang Jiancheng to transport the smuggled goods to Shantou according to the original plan, show the inspected bills to the buyers, and sell them to them. Then immediately return to Haifeng, tell the smugglers the specific situation, and collude with all of them to make a confession.
Wang Jiancheng continued to act according to Wang Zhong's instructions. As expected, he succeeded in deceiving the smugglers below. The smugglers below became more and more convinced of the abilities of Wang Zhong and his son. This has also made local smuggling and trafficking in Haifeng increasingly rampant.
The irony is that at that time, Haifeng County was cracking down on smuggling and trafficking under the instructions of the central government, but Wang Zhong, the leader of Haifeng, knew the law and broke the law, and his whole family was engaged in illegal and criminal activities.
Within the Haifeng County government agencies, some officials with a sense of justice tried to expose Wang Zhong's illegal and criminal activities, but were ostracized and retaliated by him.
He once threatened at a summary meeting of county-level cadres: "If someone wants to drive me away, I will drive him away first. If someone wants to punish me, I will crush him first." Such lawlessness makes everyone Everyone is afraid of him.
Wang Zhong took the lead in trying the law, which had an extremely bad impact on the local area.Not only did it fail to curb local smuggling in a timely manner, it also caused some law enforcement officers to be seriously corrupted, and a large number of public officials who knew the law and violated the law committed crimes.
At that time, Haifeng County once became the largest private goods market along the coast of Guangdong, and was even ridiculed as the " Far East international market." It has had a huge negative impact on the local economy.
Just when Wang Zhong thought that his illegal and criminal behavior could continue for a long time, he did not know that the Party Central Committee was already starting to deal with this "big tiger".
Chen Yun personally instructed to severely punish
In January 1982, Chen Yun, then the first secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, received a letter titled "Brief Letter of Letters and Calls", which reflected that smuggling was rampant in Guangdong, and many cadres even took the lead in smuggling. Case.
Chen Yun, who has always been good-tempered, became furious after reading the letter and said to his secretary Zhu Jiamu: "Tell Wang He, these officials must be severely punished this time. Catch those who deserve to be caught and kill those who deserve to be killed. None of them will be killed." "Let it go."
On February 11, 1982, under the instruction of Comrade Chen Yun, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued an emergency notice on cracking down on serious economic crimes. The notice emphasized the economic crimes in Guangdong and stated that economic crimes must be severely punished. Government officials who spearhead crime in the field.
Soon, officials in many coastal cities in Guangdong Province were dismissed. Due to reports from the masses and investigations by the Party Central Committee, one corruption case after another came to light.
Wang Zhong also took action quickly after hearing the turmoil. He dispersed and transferred his embezzled money and stolen goods to his relatives' homes, and prepared confessions with them in advance, hoping to resist the central government's censorship.
But paper cannot cover the fire after all. Because of Wang Zhong’s corruption in Haifeng for many years, the local people have already complained. People wrote letters of report to the Central Investigation Team one after another. Soon, the investigation team locked Wang Zhong's family and began a secret investigation.
As the investigation deepened, the investigation team found that the amount of corruption committed by Wang Zhong was staggeringly high. After mastering a large number of his criminal facts, the People's Procuratorate of Shantou, Guangdong Province arrested Wang Zhong in accordance with the law on August 24, 1982.
In court, Wang Zhong refused to plead guilty or admit the fact that he was corrupt. In order to prevent the incident from coming to light, Wang Zhong had already stored the stolen money in 14 savings banks and 42 time deposit receipts under the names of 18 individuals.
But soon, investigators obtained key evidence of Wang Zhong's corruption. Wang Siji, the manager of the anti-smuggling warehouse in Shanwei Town, provided the investigators with an account book in which every time Wang Zhong took items from the warehouse was recorded in detail. In the end, Wang Zhong had to plead guilty in the face of a large amount of evidence.
It was found that Wang Zhong used his power to embezzle anti-smuggling materials, accept bribes and demand bribes totaling 69,749 yuan, which was already a huge sum of money at the time. You know, in the early days of the founding of New China, embezzling a few thousand yuan could be sentenced to death .
In the end, Wang Zhong was sentenced to death in accordance with the law, but the judgment process of the case went through certain twists and turns, and also attracted Chen Yun's personal attention.
Regarding Wang Zhong’s case, Chen Yun listened to the case reports many times and sent multiple investigation teams to investigate the case. Many people wonder whether Wang Zhong, as a veteran comrade in the party who has made many contributions to the party and the country, can be given a lighter sentence.
However, Chen Yun believed that our country was in a critical period of reform and opening up at that time, and if this matter was not dealt with seriously, it might have extremely bad consequences. Only by severely punishing crimes in the economic field can we serve as a warning to others and ensure the internal stability of our country's economy during the process of reform and opening up.
After being sentenced to death, Wang Zhong was filled with regret. He expressed regret for his actions to the prison guard more than once, and warned the staff inside not to follow his old path of corruption.
But the repentance after committing suicide always seems so feeble. If he had adhered to his principles from the beginning and was a good and upright official serving the people, he would not have ended up like he did now.
Wang Zhong, as the first county party secretary to be shot for corruption after the reform and opening up, sounded the alarm to many officials.
Only by adhering to the basic national policy of governing the country according to law and being determined to fight corruption with high pressure can the long-term peace and stability of the country be ensured. Only by combining the fight against economic crimes with correcting the party's style can the good operation of society be ensured.
