Former China Eastern boss charged with bribery

BEIJING – The former chairman of one of China’s biggest state-owned airlines has been charged with bribery, state media said on May 8, nearly a year after he was investigated for graft.

Liu Shaoyong was the chairman of China Eastern Airlines when one of its planes mysteriously plunged into a mountainside in southern China in March 2022, killing 132 people on board.

China’s top prosecutor “decided to arrest” Liu on “suspicion of bribery”, Xinhua reported.

In China, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) issues arrest decisions, which are carried out by the police.

The SPP shared the Xinhua report on social media.

Liu chaired China Eastern from 2016 until he resigned in 2022.

He was expelled from China’s ruling communist party over “serious violations of Party discipline and laws”, Xinhua reported in January.

The Shanghai-based airline, primarily owned by the Chinese government through its parent company, is one of the country’s largest airlines.

China Eastern flight MU5375 was travelling from Kunming to Guangzhou on March 21, 2022, when the jet inexplicably fell from an altitude of about 8,840m, slamming into a mountain.

Liu’s indictment comes in the wake of widely reported findings from a United States investigation into the crash, which was China’s deadliest air disaster in decades.

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found the plane’s two engines had been shut down and noted there was a struggle in the cockpit before the crash, according to media this week.

The Xinhua report did not mention the crash or new findings from the NTSB. AFP