Why China is sentencing a tycoon to death

China Huarong Asset Management's former chairman, Lai Xiaomin, is seen during his trial in Tianjin, on Aug 11, 2020.- AFP

HONG KONG (Bloomberg): The bigamy conviction got a lot of the attention but Lai Xiaomin received a death sentence on Tuesday (Jan 5) over a much more serious issue troubling China.

Lai was chairman of China Huarong Asset Management from 2012 until he ran into trouble in 2018. He was found guilty of receiving 1.79 billion yuan (US$277 million) in bribes, with bigamy thrown in for good measure. Still, capital punishment for this kind of white-collar crime is unusual, legal experts say.