Bully to face trial for abusing power
- Source: Global Times
- [01:41 March 18 2010]
- Comments
By Fu Wen
A former township official who was known for packing a gun and using threats and violence to get his way for many years, was to face trial in Guangdong Province for abuse of power.
Li Peiqin, 55, a former CPC committee member in the township and president of people's armed forces department in Huangjiang county, is going to appear in an intermediate people's court to face charges that he abused his power during a 20-year period, Guangzhou Daily reported Wednesday.
According to Dongguan people's procuratorate, Li was charged with misappropriating 3 million yuan ($439,373) in public funds, taking 100,000 yuan ($14,645) in bribes, and illegally occupying 1.1 hectares of farmland.
In Li's hometown, a village at the border with Huangjiang county, Li reportedly controlled 35 hectares of farmland starting in the 1990s. The land represented 80 percent of total farmland in the village, Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily reported.
Li bought farmland illegally from villagers through a suspicious cooperative he co-founded with his wife in 1992 but it was never formally approved.
Eight villagers said they saw Li take out a gun and put it on the pool table during a meeting to talk about the land sale in 1998.
"No one dared say anything after Li showed the gun," the villagers said in a complaint, "We signed the contract, which was unfavorable for us, and we left. We even feel frightened now when we think about that terrified scene."
The report also said that Li cut off the electricity and threatened them with violence many times in order to force them to sell the land on his terms.
After Li found out his younger brother, Li Haiqin, wrote a complaint report about him in 1995, he hired someone to beat him and break his leg, Southern Metropolis Daily said.
Police found three body armors, 36 grenades, a shotgun and more than 1,500 bullets in Li's home after his brother reported him, the report said.
However, the local procuratorate did not confirm those allegations.
In 2006, many villagers wrote another complaint about Li's practices and it appeared on the Internet.
The letter got attention from the local government and police.
Li was detained in August and was officially arrested a month later.
Many admired him at one point in his career.
"He can do anything for work and was not even afraid of death when he was in charge of recovering problem loans in the early 1990s. Many leaders were very impressed by him," Huang Juntai, former governor of Huangjiang county, told local Southern Metropolis Daily.
