Editor’s note: The anti-corruption campaign surging through China is the most significant political event in the country’s recent history. Led by Chinese Communist Party chief Xi Jinping and his deputy Wang Qishan, it has heavily targeted officials closely tied to Jiang Zemin, for years the Party’s behind-the-scenes godfather. The campaign’s non-political aspect has also seen a mass cleansing of corrupt officials at a lower ranks around the country. This regular column documents the assault as events take place.
There’s now a number to disgraced Chinese military chief Gu Junshan’s wealth.
In a lecture extolling the need to respect the law and prevent crime, the Hebei Procuratorate said that Gu, a former People’s Liberation Army deputy logistics chief, led a decadent life and amassed a fortune of over 200 billion yuan (about $32 billion), according to Chinese news magazine Caijing.
Gu was investigated in January 2012, and details of his corruption-funded possessions—four trucks’ worth of loot were confiscated from one of his many houses; among the items are a golden wash basin and pure gold statue of Mao Zedong—were revealed by Chinese media two years later.
To put Gu’s ill-gotten wealth in perspective, he would be placed just outside the top ten of Forbes 400, a list of America’s richest by net worth. Former New York City mayor and businessman Michael Bloomberg seats at number 10 with $36.2 billion (real-time), according to the 2014 list.
Gu is worth more than Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin (number 13 and 14 with net worths of about $29 billion) but behind Amazon’s Jeff Bezos ($33.8 billion) and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg ($35.8 billion).
