CHINA: MAFIA-STYLE GANG LEADER EXECUTED

December 13, 2011: The leader and two core members of a Mafia-style gang that terrorized local communities in southwest China's city of Kunming were executed, court officials said.
Gang leader Jiang Jiatian, his mistress Yang Jufen and Xie Mingxiang were executed after the Supreme People's Court approved their sentences, said Ma Yukun, vice-president of the Kunming Intermediate People's Court.
Jiang, 58, made a fortune from drug trafficking in the mid-1990s and invested his earnings in at least 10 teahouses, Internet cafes and hotels in Kunming. He organized a gang of 41 members and nearly all of his businesses were used as dens for prostitution, extortion, racketeering, and the sale of drugs and counterfeit banknotes, Ma said.
The gang disrupted social order in at least three villages in the suburbs of Kunming and many villagers wrote to local governments complaining that they felt unsafe, court officials previously said.
Jiang and other core gang members were sentenced to death by the Kunming local court in 2009, but the father of Jiang's mistress won a two-year stay of his execution after appealing. (Sources: Xinhua, 13/12/2011)