Compiled by CHARLES RAMENDRAN, C. ARUNO and R. ARAVINTHAN
A CHEMISTRY lecturer, dubbed “China’s Walter White,” had his sentence increased from 11 to 15 years after prosecutors slapped additional charges on him for making, exporting, smuggling and selling drugs, reported China Press.
Zhang Zhengbo, an associate professor at Huazhong University of Science in Wuhan, was initially sentenced to 11 years in May 2023 for running an illegal business.
Following a retrial, prosecutors charged him with making, exporting, smuggling and selling drugs. As a result, his sentence was revised to 15 years.
It was reported that Zhang and his former classmate started a chemical company registered as a pharmaceutical intermediary manufacturer. However, what they did was to produce methcathinone, a popular amphetamine-like psychostimulant, and distribute it overseas.
He was arrested in 2015 after Customs found the drugs in a package for export and raided his lab.
Authorities found that Zhang and his company had manufactured and sold over 110kg of psychotropic drugs, having earned over US$600,000 (RM2.6mil) a month in that period.
Once the news of Zhang’s illegal enterprise broke, he was dubbed the “Walter White of China” after the main character in the popular TV series Breaking Bad, who was also a chemistry teacher turned drug maker.
The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.
