Last week I came across isolated reports of a (very) corrupt official in China. Here's an example from Zero Hedge:
Chinese police searched the house of Zhang Qi, 57, the former mayor of Danzhou, and found a large amount of cash, as well as 13.5 tons of gold in ingots in a secret basement of his home, according to local media.
According to unofficial reports, in addition to the $625 million worth of gold, cash worth 268 billion yuan ($37 billion) was discovered.
There's more at the link.
The figures seemed kinda high to me (particularly the cash), but then video reports surfaced. This is alleged to be his gold stash:
I'd love to know how a former mayor and Communist Party secretary (in a relatively minor branch of the party) managed to amass wealth like that. It doesn't seem possible. Still, even if you reduce the amounts by a factor of 10, it's pretty impressive. I've been looking for more information in the mainstream media, but so far no-one's provided it.
I think I'm in the wrong business . . .
Peter
10 comments:
10 out of 10 communists agree: Gulags aren't that bad when you're in charge.
http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/calculations.html
Here is a rough volume calculation of how much space you would need to store that much cash.
A little over the top... sigh
No Peter, you ain't in the wrong business. They are going to execute him. Meanwhile, in jail, he's probably reduced to eating captured vermin. And, his family, near and far, will be blackballed, watched, demoted in employment, or worse.
Well, in any good communist society, those at the top have all the goods. In Russia, it was huge amounts of gold and gems, dachas that would rival Hollyweird castles, and hookers and blow. Same in Red China, or Cuba, or old-school red Vietnam (they actually seem to be reforming more than any other communist society) or North Korea or Cambodia under the Khymer Rouge or Nazi Germany...
You can tell that he did something wrong against the other leaders because they made an issue of it. But don't think the other leaders don't have their gold-filled basements and huge cash supplies and Swiss bank accounts and...
Kinda like the leaders of the Democrat party.
Hmmmm...
Put me on the side of the skeptics. I am doubtful that this is true.
At least part of that is not real. I've handled full sized gold bars on a tour of the local gold mine, they are ~27.5 lbs, those shelves are not holding gold, even copper would have them bowed out far more.
That being said, a fair amount is probably gold and he is probably getting blamed for others stolen gold as well. They will execute him in any case.
Do gold bars really clink that way? I don't have enough bars to check.
I should point out that the Chinese have created a way to fake gold objects by using a chunk of tungsten inside, so weight is no longer a valid method to confirm that it is pure. Now it needs to be scanned in some manner to check for density changes. Looks and feels like gold, but melt it and it comes up short.
Don't you think they could have planted this if they wanted to?
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