Ex-Shanghai boss sentenced to 18 years for graft: official media

0 Comments | AFP, April, 2008

SHANGHAI (AFP) — Former Shanghai Communist Party boss Chen Liangyu was sentenced to 18 years in prison on Friday, state press said, the most senior Chinese official to be convicted of graft in over a decade.

Chen, 61, was sentenced by a court in the northern city of Tianjin after being convicted of taking bribes and abusing his power, Xinhua news agency said.

He was tried last month in a scandal that shook national politics when it emerged in mid-2006 that hundreds of millions of dollars from Shanghai's pension fund had been illegally siphoned off.

Last month, the State Audit Office revealed figures that put the amount of stolen cash at 33.9 billion yuan (4.8 billion dollars), 10 times more than the original estimate of 480 million dollars.

The state...