No Affluenza in Chinatown

All the fortune cookies in China could not save the Chinese mining tycoon Liu Han, his brother and three of their crew from being executed.

Hong Kong (CNN) China has executed a mining tycoon found guilty of murder and running a “mafia-style” organization, state media reported Monday.

Liu Han, 48, the former chairman of Hanlong Group, was executed along with his younger brother, Liu Wei, and three associates for a multitude of crimes they were convicted of.

The men were found guilty in 2014 and executed yesterday; unlike prisoners in the USA that are put up in the Hilton Hotel for 15 – 20 years before they are put to death.

Liu and crew have been linked by state to some very high ranking officials in the government, one being the most senior official snared in China’s anti-corruption campaign.

The Liu brothers started their criminal empire in the early 90’s operating gambling joints in China’s southwestern Sichuan province where they became tied into a lot of underworld crime figures.

The brothers’ stayed pretty much under the radar for years until 2009 when there was a shooting at a Guanghan tea house that attracting the attention form central authorities. The hit supposedly was ordered by Liu Wei and directed at an underworld rival.

I really doubt  justice was the main objective in this case. Lui and his crew most probably were on the wrong side of the fence and stepped on some big shots fortune cookies; or they may have run across a judge that didn’t need a new rickshaw.

China is no stranger to corruption in it’s government. In 2014, China was ranked 100th out of 175 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, an organization that studies organized crime in governments.

Most of their corruption is centered around  graft, bribery, embezzlement, back-door deals, nepotism, patronage, statistical falsification and every once and a while they blow a few peoples heads off.

Be that as it may; I like the Chinese way of taking out the garbage, it saves the country a lot of Yuan in the long run.