CHINA

3 Executed for Stealing Receipt Books: The government has executed three men for stealing tax receipt books as part of a clampdown on tax evasion scams that have put billions of dollars of state revenue at risk, the official People’s Daily reported. The Harbin city intermediate court in north China’s Heilongjiang province delivered the death sentence on Deng Yucai, a chemical factory worker, and his unemployed accomplices Yu Min and Sui Guohua, the newspaper said. The three men stole 800 books of blank value-added tax receipts from a county tax office warehouse in March and tried to sell them to companies intent on dodging taxes, according to Gao Changli, vice director of the Supreme People’s Court, quoted in the paper.