Former senior official sentenced to 20 years for graft

TIANJIN -- Pan Yiyang, former vice chairman of the government of North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a court in Tianjin on Tuesday for taking and offering bribes.

Pan was also fined 4 million yuan (around $580,000), and his illicit gains shall be turned over to the state treasury, said the First Intermediate People's Court of Tianjin in a statement.

Pan was found to have accepted bribes worth 86 million yuan, helping others with business operations and obtaining mining licenses, while holding a series of offices in Jiangxi and Inner Mongolia between 1999 and 2014.

The court found that Pan had offered bribes of 7.6 million yuan to Ling Jihua, then director of the General Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, from 2000 to 2013.

The court said Pan had been given relatively lenient treatment in return for cooperating with investigators, handing over the proceeds of his corruption and exposing others' crimes.