11 jailed over 'mafia crimes'
Eleven people are given prison due to mafia-style crimes in Hunan Province on Monday.
Eleven people were on Monday jailed for up to 25 years for organizing and participating in mafia-style crimes in central China’s Hunan Province.
A court in the city of Yiyang said the defendants had carried out illegal fishing and sand mining since 2001 after they privately fenced in a part of Dongting Lake.
The court said that a mafia-style gang was organized to provoke trouble, protect illegal gains, extort local people, defraud loans and bribe local officials.
According to the court investigation, the gang extorted over 4 million yuan (US$568,000), gained over 22 million yuan from illegal sand mining and 16 million yuan from illegal fishing, collected 8.4 million yuan from fraudulent loans and defrauded the government of over 800,000 yuan in compensation earmarked to promote environmentally friendly practices.
Their acts caused resource losses and river bed repair costs of up to 31 million yuan, as well as a direct economic loss to fisheries of 8.4 million yuan and over 25 million yuan in ecological loss.
In addition, they bribed six government officials 22 times with over 2 million yuan.
Xia Shun’an, the gang head, was sentenced to 25 years in prison, deprived of political rights for five years and stripped of all personal property.
Ten other defendants were given prison terms ranging from 27 months to 16 years.
The gang’s illegal gains of over 40 million yuan were returned or confiscated by the court order.
