Former Deputy Chief of China’s State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (STMA) He Zehua has been prosecuted for accepting bribes, according to China Daily.
Zehua was accused of taking advantage of his former positions to seek profits for others, accepting a large amount of money and valuables in return, according to a statement by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate.
Zehua was arrested in July.
He Zehua, former deputy chief of China’s State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, has been arrested on charges of alleged bribe taking, reports China Daily.
The Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the Liaoning Provincial People’s Procuratorate ordered the arrest. His case was investigated by the National Commission of Supervision.
China’s State Tobacco Monopoly Administration released the Guidelines for Promoting the Building of Quality Assurance Systems for Exported Electronic Cigarette Products on July 20, according to 2Firsts, which published a translated version of the release.
The guidelines consist of 18 articles covering the following:
Several subsidiaries of China’s State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (STMA) have stated that close relatives of employees in leadership positions should not be hired in order to prevent nepotism and ensure fairness, reports China Daily.
A notice from the Shandong Tobacco Monopoly Administration stated that new college graduates who are spouses or immediate family members of company leaders should not be employed. It also stated that relatives within three generations and those related by marriage should not be hired.
Tobacco monopoly administrations in Shanxi, Qinghai, Gansu, Henan and Yunnan released similar notices this year.
As China’s economic recovery loses momentum, more graduates are opting for stable jobs at state-owned enterprises, making competition for such positions more intense. Online citizens said that preventing close relatives of workers at these enterprises from being hired would create a more fair employment environment, and they called for more transparent hiring practices.
The STMA implemented restrictions on nepotism in job hiring in 2020 while the Organization Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security issued requirements in 2019 to prevent nepotism in government institutions.
There have been frequent reports of nepotism in state-owned enterprises in the finance, telecommunications, electric power and tobacco sectors, according to a 2020 Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the National Commission of Supervision release.
Zhao Hongshun, former deputy head of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (STMA), was sentenced to life imprisonment, deprived of political rights for life and had all his personal property confiscated on June 18 for taking bribes worth more than RMB90 million ($12.7 million), according to a news release issued by The Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China.
The Huai’an Intermediate People’s Court in East China’s Jiangsu province issued the verdict, saying the money involved in Zhao’s case will be turned over to the state treasury. Zhao said in court he would not appeal.
According to the complaint, Zhao took advantage of his positions, including that of deputy director and deputy head of the economic operation department of the STMA and deputy director of the Anhui Provincial Tobacco Monopoly Administration, to assist individuals and companies in contracts related to the printing of cigarette labels, tobacco advertising business and personal promotion from 2002 to 2018.
Zhao was placed under investigation by China’s top graft watchdogs in February 2019. He was expelled from the communist party and removed from public positions and arrested in July. In September 2019, Zhao was charged with bribery.
China’s tobacco companies produced more cigarettes even as the number of tobacco farms decreased in the first half of 2014, reports Xinhua News Agency quoting figures from the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (STMA).
In the January-June period, Chinese cigarette manufacturers produced 1.3 million sticks, 0.2 percent more than in the first half of 2013. Meanwhile, the area of farming land dedicated to tobacco fell by 170,000 hectares to 1.23 million hectares, according to the STMA.
The tobacco industry generated RMB579.54 billion ($94 billion) in revenue for the Chinese government over the first half of 2014. Tobacco taxes constituted about 7.8 percent of China’s fiscal revenues during that period, according to the Finance Ministry and the STMA.
There are more than 300 million smokers in China