China expelled General Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) and the country’s highest-ranked officer, and Liu Zhenli, chief of staff of the Joint Staff Department, from the Communist Party and the military.

The state news agency Xinhua said the two were accused of disloyalty, of forming cliques and factions and of accepting “exceptionally large sums of money”, with their cases sent to military legal organs for review and prosecution, according to Reuters. The expulsion still requires ratification at a plenary session of the party’s Central Committee, and the announcement came three days before Xi Jinping’s trip to Washington and weeks before the October plenum on internal party discipline.