AUTHORITIES have transferred former domestic security chief Zhou Yongkang’s corruption case to “judicial organs,” paving the way for his trial, the Party’s anti-graft watchdog announced yesterday.

    Huang Shuxian, deputy secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) made the remarks in a statement on the CCDI’s website.

    Zhou, 71, is by far the highest-profile figure caught up in President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on corruption. He is the most senior Chinese official to be caught up in a corruption scandal since 1949.

    According to Huang, cases of several other former top officials have also been transferred to judicial organs.

    They include Li Dongsheng, former vice minister of public security; Jiang Jiemin, former top regulator of State-owned enterprises; and Li Chongxi, former chairman of Sichuan Provincial Political Consultative Conference.

    A fourth official, former Party chief of the China Association for Science and Technology, Shen Weichen, has also had his case sent to prosecutors, the CCDI announced.

    CPC authorities announced last July they were investigating Zhou, who retired from its most powerful group, the Politburo Standing Committee, in 2012.

    Then, in December, he was arrested, ousted from the CPC and placed under a judicial probe on a barrage of charges, including corruption and leaking State secrets.

    The case makes Zhou the most senior CPC official to face prosecution since the 1980s.

    The investigation found that Zhou took advantage of his posts to seek profits for others, resulting in serious losses of State-owned assets, and accepted a huge amount of bribes personally and through his family, according to Xinhua News Agency.

    Zhou also leaked Party and State secrets and accepted money and property either himself or through his relatives, Xinhua said.

    Zhou committed adultery with a number of women and had “traded his power for sex and money,” it said.(SD-Agencies)

    SD-Agencies