500 local Chinese lawmakers resign in fraud scandal

By AFP

HONG KONG: More than 500 municipal lawmakers in one Chinese province have stood down following an electoral fraud scandal, as Beijing ramps up its sweeping anti-corruption crackdown, state media reported on Saturday.

The 512 municipal officials in China’s central Hunan province resigned, were disqualified or dismissed after being caught taking bribes from 56 representatives of the provincial People’s Congress to elect them to their posts, Xinhua news agency said.

Municipal officials have the power to appoint representatives of their provincial assembly, the local rubber-stamp parliament, although the process does not constitute a fully free or open election.

Local authorities dismissed 56 representatives of the 763-strong Hunan People’s Congress for being “elected by bribery”, state television channel CCTV said on its Twitter account.

An initial investigation revealed that 110 million yuan ($18 million) was offered in bribes to lawmakers and staff in the province’s second city of Hengyang, state media reported, citing a Hunan government statement.

“The fraud, involving such a huge number of lawmakers and a large amount of money, is serious in nature and has a vile impact,” Xinhua quoted the statement as saying.

“This is a challenge to China’s system of people’s congresses, socialist democracy, law and Party discipline,” it said.

It named Tong Mingqian, the former Party chief of Hengyang, as being “directly responsible” for the election scandal.

President Xi Jinping has led a high-profile clampdown on China’s notoriously corrupt officialdom since taking power last year, promising to stamp out both high-level “tigers” and low-ranking “flies”, amid widespread anger over official corruption.

Read more » The Times of India
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/china/500-local-Chinese-lawmakers-resign-in-fraud-scandal/articleshow/28058716.cms

Abdul Qadeer accuses Pakistani military figures of accepting bribes from North Korea

– The nuclear scientist considered the father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb has claimed that North Korea gave millions of dollars in bribes to senior military figures in exchange for weapons secrets.

By Rob Crilly, Islamabad

Abdul Qadeer Khan signed a confession in 2004 admitting that he had handed classified information to Iran, Libya and North Korea but his supporters have long claimed he was made a scapegoat by a government which cast him as a rogue operator.

Now documents passed to a US nuclear weapons analyst by Dr Khan suggest that high-level Pakistani military officials knew about – and personally profited from – his sales of nuclear weapons technology.

In a written statement, Dr Khan describes helping transfer more than $3m to senior officers, delivering the cash in a canvas bag and cartons, including one in which it was hidden under fruit.

The revelations, which have been denied by Pakistani officials, will only heighten already difficult relations between Islamabad and Washington. …

Read more →  telegraph.co.uk

North Korea paid Pak generals for nuclear secrets

– Pakistan’s nuclear-bomb maker says North Korea paid bribes for know-how

By R. Jeffrey Smith

The founder of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb program asserts that the government of North Korea bribed top military officials in Islamabad to obtain access to sensitive nuclear technology in the late 1990s.

Abdul Qadeer Khan has made available documents that he says support his claim that he personally transferred more than $3 million in payments by North Korea to senior officers in the Pakistani military, which he says subsequently approved his sharing of technical know-how and equipment with North Korean scientists.

Khan also has released what he says is a copy of a North Korean official’s 1998 letter to him, written in English, that spells out details of the clandestine deal.

Some Western intelligence officials and other experts have said that they think the letter is authentic and that it offers confirmation of a transaction they have long suspected but could never prove. Pakistani officials, including those named as recipients of the cash, have called the letter a fake. Khan, whom some in his country have hailed as a national hero, is at odds with many Pakistani officials, who have said he acted alone in selling nuclear secrets.

Nevertheless, if the letter is genuine, it would reveal a remarkable instance of corruption related to nuclear weapons. U.S. officials have worried for decades about the potential involvement of elements of Pakistan’s military in illicit nuclear proliferation, partly because terrorist groups in the region and governments of other countries are eager to acquire an atomic bomb or the capacity to build one.

Read more → THE WASHINGTON POST

[See → letter from North Korean official to A.Q. Khan]