(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-12-06 15:11

BEIJING -- The former board chairman of the Northeast Expressway Co. Ltd. was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve after being convicted on five counts of corruption, including bribery.

Under a final ruling handed down on Tuesday by the Intermediate People's Court of Baicheng City, Jilin Province, Zhang Xiaoguang was found guilty of taking bribes, corruption, embezzlement of public funds, illegally seeking private interest on behalf of relatives, and possessing major assets for which he could not account, the Beijing News reported.

In addition to his convictions, Zhang was also stripped of political rights for life and all his personal property was confiscated.

The five counts involved 50 million yuan, but there was no breakdown for each count.

According to the newspaper, Zhang's case is believed to be connected with another incident in which Gao Shan, former head of a branch of the Bank of China (BOC) on Hesong Street in Harbin, the capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, allegedly siphoned 1 billion yuan (130 million US dollars) from customers' accounts to Canada.

China's Ministry of Public Security has asked Canada to extradite Gao, who fled after sending the funds to Canada in 2005, and another suspect, Li Dongzhe. They are currently under the surveillance of Canadian police.

Zhang's case was a complex one, the newspaper reported, as shown by the 36-page court verdict that ran to nearly 30,000 Chinese characters.

Zhang was first arrested on January 13, 2005, on charges of misappropriating public funds.

Northeast Expressway Co. Ltd, a publicly listed company, said two days later in a public announcement that 293 million yuan of its funds were missing from the BOC's Hesong Street Branch. Shortly afterwards, Gao, chief of the branch, was discovered to have fled overseas.

Zhang's first trial commenced at the Intermediate People's Court of Baicheng City in September 2006. However, it was soon called off at the request of public prosecutors for further investigation, following the detention of Dong Fang, former general manager of Donggao Science and Technologies Oils Co. Ltd, a subsidiary of Northeast Expressway, who reportedly gave Zhang 10 million yuan in bribes.

Public prosecutors claimed in their indictment that Zhang deposited funds from his company at the BOC Hesong Street Branch after having accepted bribes from Li Dongzhe, the mastermind behind the BOC case, which eventually led to the loss of Northeast Expressway Co. Ltd.'s money.

Zhang pleaded innocent in the BOC case in a second trial held in January this year.