Former Chinese Politburo member Bo Xilai was charged with bribery, corruption and abuse of power, as the Communist Party's new leadership seeks to bring to a close its most serious political scandal in two decades.
The charges were broadcast in a one-sentence report on the official Xinhua News Agency.
The formal indictment made against Bo today means that under Chinese law, a court will probably deliver a judgment within a month. Bo's wife Gu Kailai was convicted of murdering British businessman Neil Heywood last August after a one-day trial that produced a suspended death sentence.
A conviction will cap the party's handling of a case that roiled last year's leadership transition in which Xi Jinping took over as general secretary. The party is seeking to shore up its legitimacy as the new leaders tackle corruption, including sex tapes featuring senior officials and revelations of cadres living opulent lifestyles.
"This leadership looks stable enough and bedded in now, and Bo marginalized enough, for them to go ahead with this," Kerry Brown, a former U.K. diplomat and a professor of China studies at the University of Sydney said in an e-mail before the announcement. "It sends a strong, confident message, and clears away the final collateral from last year's power transition, so from that point of view handling it now would make political sense."
Bo, 64, once seen as a possible candidate for the ruling Politburo Standing Committee, was expelled from the Communist Party in September. He was accused of taking bribes throughout his career and abusing his power in the homicide case against his wife, according to Xinhua. He also had improper sexual relations with "a number" of women, Xinhua reported.
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Michael Forsythe in Beijing at mforsythe@bloomberg.net; Nicholas Wadhams in Beijing at nwadhams@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Hirschberg at phirschberg@bloomberg.net
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