Yuan Renguo, former powerful president of the giant that produces China’s most popular liquor, Kweichow Moutai, was sentenced to life in prison for accepting bribes. The ruling, handed down by the Intermediate People’s Court of Guiyang, Guizhou Province, included the loss of political rights for life and the confiscation of all personal property.
Yuan, 64, found guilty of accepting 112.9 million yuan (about $ 17 million) in bribes between 1994 and 2018, has been under investigation since 2019, when he was expelled from the Chinese Communist Party and removed from all charges for “serious disciplinary violations”, while the value of the company’s shares had plummeted following a corruption scandal.
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Kweichow Moutai is the most popular super alcoholic in China: with an alcohol content of 53 degrees, it is an extremely strong, long-prepared and renowned liqueur, to the point that many buy it more than to drink it, as an investment, given that the value of some bottles it can easily exceed 40 thousand dollars. Produced in the locality of Maotai, in Guizhou, Moutai is associated with the festivals and some historical passages of China: the popular distillate of rice and fermented sorghum was the favorite of the Great Helmsman Mao Zedong, and was also offered to US President Richard Nixon during his historic visit to China in 1972.
Most recently, President Xi Jinping drank it in 2013 in California in the company of US President Barack Obama. As for Italy, in 2019 the company that produces the Kweichow Moutai also signed a partnership with Inter which ended in the management of Steven Zhang, the son of tycoon Zhang Jindong, head of the Suning conglomerate.