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Flies and Tigers | 抓蝇打虎

Ex-safety watchdog chief jailed for 15 years in wake of Tianjin blasts

Source: Agencies | February 22, 2017, Wednesday | Print Edition

CHINA yesterday jailed Yang Dongliang, the former head of its safety watchdog for 15 years for graft, the state broadcaster said, wrapping up an inquiry launched after blasts in 2015 killed nearly 170 people in Tianjin City, where he worked.

Regular mishaps, from factory fires to mine cave-ins, have boosted public concern about China’s relatively lax safety standards, which the government has pledged to improve.

Yang, former head of the State Administration of Work Safety, who spent much of his career in the port city, was suspected of violating law and Party discipline and sacked days after the blasts in a warehouse storing hazardous chemicals.

A court in Beijing found him guilty of abusing his position, including when he was former vice mayor of Tianjin, by accepting bribes to grant contracts to companies, China Central Television said.

According to the verdict by the Second Intermediate People’s Court of Beijing, from 2002 to 2015 when Yang was vice mayor of Tianjin and a member of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China Tianjin Municipal Committee, head of the State Administration of Work Safety and other posts, he helped others in running businesses, promotions, tenders and other issues, illegally accepting assets worth 28.5 million yuan (US$4.1 million).

In 1999, as head of Tianjin’s economic commission, Yang bought an apartment with public funds of 250,000 yuan.

The court reduced his sentence because he had confessed and had taken steps to return bribe money and assets to the state treasury, CCTV said.

The company operating the chemical warehouse that blew up in August 2015, killing hundreds, did not have the license needed to handle and store dangerous materials for more than a year, state media said at the time.

The State Administration of Work Safety said on its website that Yang signed a directive in 2012 allowing companies to function without a license to work with dangerous chemicals as long as they had a license governing port operations.

President Xi Jinping vowed after the Tianjin blasts that the authorities should learn the lessons paid for in blood.

The explosions in the world’s 10th busiest port forced the evacuation of thousands of people from a large industrial site and nearby residential areas after toxic chemicals were detected in the air.

There were about 700 tons of deadly sodium cyanide in the warehouse at the time.

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