February 15, 2010
By KEITH BRADSHER
HONG KONG — The former chairman of one of China’s largest electronics companies has been charged with insider trading, offering bribes and running illegal operations, the state-run China News Service said.
Huang Guangyu’s case was sent to the Beijing Municipal Second Intermediate People’s Court for trial, and the people accused of being his accomplices have also been indicted, China News Service said Saturday without identifying those people.
The charges against Mr. Huang had long been expected. He has been in detention since November 2008, and Chinese officials subsequently took the uncommon step of publicly confirming that he was under investigation by the Ministry of Public Security.
He resigned as chairman of the electronics company, Gome, two months after his detention.
He has been held incommunicado, as is common in China during investigations, and could not be reached Sunday for comment.
Sunday marks the first day of the Lunar New Year holiday, with government and corporate offices closed across China and tens of millions of people going to their hometowns to celebrate.
The long-running scandal over Mr. Huang’s alleged activities has already tarnished the careers of a series of Chinese officials. Zhu Ying, the former deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau, was expelled from the municipal discipline inspection committee of the Communist Party last December. The committee issued a statement at the time saying, without providing details, that he had been stripped of his membership in connection with the investigation of Mr. Huang.
The investigation of Mr. Huang has also resulted in further reviews at the Ministry of Public Security of how the ministry’s economic crimes section had handled the affair, according to the state-run news agency Xinhua, which is larger than China News Service.
Before his arrest, Mr. Huang had been one of the wealthiest people in China, with Forbes magazine estimating his wealth then at $2.7 billion and the Hurun Report, which also keeps track of the wealth of Chinese business leaders, estimating that he was worth $6.3 billion.
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