Typical case of rural underworld crime: A village committee director is sentenced to 25 years in prison for 11 charges

Rural officials are in control of the situation where rural resources are illegally controlled by the village committee director who holds the power at the grassroots level. Eventually, he was charged with 11 counts and sentenced to 25 years in prison. On January 9th, the Supreme Court released five typical cases of punishing rural evil crimes. Among them, three cases involve organizing, leading, and participating in underworld organizations.

The Supreme Court stated that since the normalization of the fight against underworld and evil forces, the people’s courts have maintained a high-pressure crackdown on evil crimes, continuously rectified “village bullies,” and have fought against rural family evil forces and their “protection umbrellas” in accordance with law. For rural “village bullies” and family evil forces crimes, the people’s courts adhere to the principle of “fighting early and small, and fighting immediately if they are exposed,” and impose heavy sentences on criminals with deep subjective malignancy and high personal danger to show their stance of severely punishing. At the same time, they adhere to the principle of “preventing disease before it happens,” and put forward targeted judicial suggestions to social governance loopholes found during the handling of cases to relevant departments.

The evil forces hold the grassroots power and illegally control rural resources. The village chief was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. The case shows that between 2000 and 2010, defendant Bu Bo became economically powerful by establishing coal transportation businesses and opening ports. He then used illegal means such as ticket-buying and election bribery to become a village committee director at a certain village, holding grassroots village affairs and controlling party affairs. In 2010, relying on his economic power and criminal organization strength, Bu Bo used his identity as a village director and community manager to gather members of his own clan and social idlers, taking a certain KTV, a community construction site, and “Zixia Cultural Park” as footholds. Through continuous criminal activities such as provoking trouble and mass fighting, he formed an underworld organization with Bu Bo as the organizer and leader. The organization made huge economic profits through organized criminal activities such as extortion, forced transactions, job encroachment, and illegal land occupation in rural areas. Bu Bo relied on the strength of the organization to commit crimes, boldly bullied and harmed the masses, long-term control of village affairs and community affairs, arranged organization members to collect various unreasonable high fees from community residents. He controlled the coal transportation business in the local area for a long time, causing many victims not to be able to safeguard their legal rights through normal channels, seriously disrupting the local economy and social order. The People’s Court of Weishan County in Shandong Province sentenced Bu Bo to 25 years in prison for crimes including organizing and leading an underworld organization, provoking trouble, mass fighting, extortion, impersonating an official, loan fraud, obstruction of justice, forced transaction, illegal land occupation, job encroachment, rape; their other seventeen defendants were sentenced to varying degrees of imprisonment from nine years to two years; their fines were imposed; their illegal gains were confiscated. After the verdict was announced, Bu Bo and others appealed. The Jining Intermediate People’s Court dismissed the appeal and affirmed the original judgment.

The Supreme Court pointed out in elucidating the typical significance of the case that this is a typical case where evil forces hold the grassroots power and illegally control rural resources. The defendant Bu Bo relied on family clan power to manipulate grass-roots elections, served as a village director for a long time, held grassroots power, monopolized rural resources, seriously disrupting rural economy and social order. The crime organization has a high proportion of Bu family members (77.8%), built “Zixia (Bu family ancestors) Cultural Park” by illegally occupying agricultural land to win over people’s hearts and took it as an important foothold of the organization which seriously interferes with grass-roots governance. The Supreme Court said that the people’s courts imposed legal sentences on all defendants involved in this case which effectively maintained stability in rural areas while also issuing judicial suggestions to relevant departments based on issues such as inadequate supervision of village (community) party committees and governments as well as industry governance deficiencies to further improve the grass-roots social governance system.

Another typical case shows that rural idlers gather wealth and become local tyrants through means such as opening gambling houses which even attract some village cadres who are involved in grassroots governance personnel. The case shows that defendant Ouyang Chenchen was born aggressive and has been involved in many violent incidents including a serious fight that left one person seriously injured two others lightly injured but no legal action was taken due to private settlements resulting in his social reputation gradually spreading out over time which allowed him to gradually gather criminal organizations. In 2012 Ouyang Chenchen gathered crowds to compete for minerals holding knives pipes bombs and other weapons causing three people injured three cars smashed with two cars burned down causing extremely bad social impact forming an underworld organization with