The stealth mission that brought down a Chinese police chief
Communist Party investigators had to cover their tracks on the trail of corruption in Tianjin, according to state media
For weeks, Ren Aijun and his team would keep the radio on or walk along a river when they needed to talk.
Ren and his graft-busting colleagues were in Tianjin to investigate corruption among the municipality’s leaders and did not want to be overheard by local law enforcers.
Their two-month mission three years ago had been well publicised but by the time it was over they had enough information to put the city’s notorious police chief, Wu Changshun, behind bars, according to a documentary aired on Friday on state broadcaster CCTV.
The documentary detailed some of the cloak-and-dagger operations that Ren and his team from the Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection had to conduct before Wu was convicted in May of corruption and abuse of power.
The graft-busters’ trip had to be publicised so whistle-blowers knew where to find them, but the investigators also had to keep their movements under wraps to ensure they did not tip off targets.
“We were very careful, especially with our meeting rooms and dormitory. We used specific equipment to search for wiretap devices,” Ren said in the documentary.
