The former president of China Construction Bank (CCB), Zhang Enzhao, has been sentenced to a 15-year jail term for receiving bribes.

The sentence was handed down here on Friday by the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court.

The court found that Zhang took advantage of his position between 2000 and 2004, when he was vice president, then president and finally chairman of China Construction Bank Ltd.

The court heard that he received cash and property bribes totaling more than four million yuan (500,000 U.S. dollars).

The court ruled that Zhang committed bribery by abusing his power to benefit other people and illegally received large amounts of cash and property in return.

The court said it gave Zhang a lenient sentence of 15 years because he made a full confession, even though investigators had no hard evidence of the crimes, and because he turned the bribe money over to the state.

Zhang resigned from the posts of China Construction Bank chairman and director for personal reasons in March last year.

China Construction Bank was the first of China's "big four" state-owned commercial banks to go public when it listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in October last year.

Zhang pleaded guilty to the charges against him in September on his first appearance in court since he left the CCB.

A report published on the CCB's website said in June, 2005, that Zhang was being investigated by the commission for discipline inspection of the Communist Party of China (CPC) for violating party discipline.

Zhang, 60, a graduate of Fudan University, started working in China's banking sector in 1964 and attained the CCB chairmanship in 2004.

The frequent criminal cases in China's banking sector resulted from a variety of factors, including problems within the banking system, conflicts in society, and the social credit environment, said an official at China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC).

Zhang was the latest high rank official in the industry to fall from grace as the government strived to reform the bank system.

Yu Dalu, former deputy governor of the Agriculture Development Bank of China, was sentenced to life imprisonment for bribe taking and embezzlement in February. All his personal property was confiscated.

Liu Jinbao, the Bank of China (BOC) Hong Kong's former president, was sentenced to death with two years in suspension for graft in August 2005.

Wang Xuebing, another former president of the CCB, was sentenced to 12 years in jail for taking bribes in December 2003.

Zhu Xiaohua, former chairman of China Everbright Group, was convicted of accepting bribes and jailed for 15 years in 2002.

Source: Xinhua