Top Sinopec official named in corruption probe

China's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the body responsible for maintaining communist party rules, has announced an investigation into Wang Tianpu, the chairman of China Petrochemical, parent company of Hong Kong-listed oil giant Sinopec.

Wang attended a meeting of the board chaired by Sinopec chief executive, Fu Chengyu, on 24 April. But on 27 April, the CCDI declared that Wang was under investigation for "alleged serious violations of law". The official has been relieved of his positions, Sinopec says.

Wang becomes the highest profile casualty of an oil sector that has come under sustained fire from party discipline investigators for its alleged corruption since President Xi Jinping came to power. Xi called corruption an existential threat to communist party rule. Investigators had, to date, focused on Sinopec's upstream-focused rival, CNPC, arresting that company's former chairman, Jiang Jiemin two years ago. He went on trial earlier this month. CNPC was expected to refocus on its so-called core strengths of oil and gas production — and rein in the costly expansion of CNPC's domestic refining business — following Jiang's arrest. It is not clear that the overhaul of the firm's top management has, in fact, led to a strategic rethink. CNPC listed arm, PetroChina, is filling crude tanks for a new refinery at Anning in southwest China, while its crude production barely changed last year from 2.6mn b/d in 2013.

Xi's predecessor, Hu Jintao, oversaw the 2007 arrest and indictment of Chen Tonghai, chairman of Sinopec in 2006-07.

Chen received a suspended death sentence in 2009. The conviction rate of the CCDI, which sits outside China's legal system and does not answer to it, is extremely high. It is headed by Wang Qishan, a close ally of the president's and former head of the central bank.

Wang, a chemical engineer by education, ran Sinopec's 370,000 b/d Qilu refinery in the oil province of Shandong in 2000-01 before moving to the company's headquarters in Beijing as a vice president. CNPC's Jiang, who also emerged from the Shandong oil sector, appears to have been a far more political figure — as a member of the communist party's governing central committee in 20012.

In February this year, the CCDI announced it would be extending its crackdown to at least another 40 state-owned companies this year. The CCDI has also made arrests in China's military, the PLA, and local government in western China's Sichuan province. Sinopec appointed 28 in-house CCDI inspectors last month, the company has announced.

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