BEIJING - A former Chinese Communist Party official was jailed Wednesday for 15 years after a court found him guilty of accepting bribes worth three million yuan (362,320 dollars), state media said.
Zhang Zonghai, the former head of the publicity department of the Communist Party of southwestern China's Chongqing municipality, was convicted by a court in the eastern city of Tianjin, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The court found he had received the bribes from a cement company in return for business favours and then made huge profits by investing the illicit money in the property market.
Despite China's top leaders' repeated pledges to crack down on corruption and severe punishment for crooked senior officials, corruption remains rampant in China and is often cited as a major source of public discontent.
05/18/2005 14:01 GMT