A court yesterday sentenced businessman Zhang Rongkun, a major player in Shanghai's biggest ever corruption case, to 19 years in jail, a mainland magazine reported.
Zhang is among those who illegally borrowed from the city's social security fund in a case that implicated disgraced Shanghai Communist Party secretary Chen Liangyu and more than 25 other government officials and company executives.
The Songyuan Intermediate People's Court in Jilin province sentenced Zhang on five charges involving bribery, stock market manipulation and fraud over a corporate bond issue and misuse of capital from one of his companies, Caijing magazine said on its website.
The court also decided to withhold more than 1.3 billion yuan (HK$1.4 billion) in assets seized from Zhang and fined two of his companies a combined 282 million yuan.
Zhang, 34, plans to appeal against the sentence, the magazine said. Three others from his flagship company, Fuxi Investment Holding Co, were also sentenced yesterday.
Zhang's rise from a small-time entrepreneur running a clothing business in Jiangsu province to China's 16th richest person shows how a network of connections and well-placed bribes can build a business empire on the mainland.
'He was an ambitious man who started from nothing and whose good sense got away from him,' said Russell Flannery, who has interviewed Zhang as compiler of Forbes magazine's 'China Rich List'.