Sun Heling, former head of the finance department of the Ministry of Agriculture and chief economist, was sentenced on Thursday to eight years in prison for taking bribes and abuse of power.
The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court found that the 68-year-old Sun facilitated Lantian Co., Ltd, a Shenyang-based agricultural products company, with its listing on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. In return, the company sold 80,000 employee shares to Sun's daughter and sister-in-law for 100,000 yuan (13,517 U.S. dollars) in 1996.
From May to June 1999, when Lantian's employee shares were allowed to be traded, Sun's relatives sold the shares, reaping illicit gains of 4.88 million yuan (664,000 U.S. dollars).
Lantian company was found to have falsified its financial records and had bad loans worth more than 3 billion yuan in 2001.
The court also found Sun, who managed the Chinese Agricultural Science and Education Foundation in 1996, arbitrarily used the Foundation's 5 million yuan regular deposit as a guarantee for Wuxi Tianhong Industry Company to get 4 million yuan worth of bank loans.
After Tianhong was unable to repay the loans in 2003 and went bankrupt, the Foundation assumed responsibility, resulting in a loss of 2.3 million yuan.
The court held that Sun's acts constituted the crimes of accepting bribes and abuse of power. However, it gave Sun a reduced jail sentence because he voluntarily surrendered the bribes and showed remorse for his abuse of power.
Sun, a native of east China's Anhui Province, retired in 1999 and was dismissed from the Communist Party of China in 2005 for violating disciplinary rules.
Source: Xinhua
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