Killers who stabbed British Tibetan monk to death in row over cash given death sentence in China

China has sentenced two men to death for stabbing to death a British monk who founded Europe’s first Tibetan monastery over a financial dispute, state media said.

Akong Tulku Rinpoche, co-founder of Scotland’s Samye Ling monastery, was found dead with multiple stab wounds at his home in the southwestern city of Chengdu in 2013.

A court in the city sentenced two men, named in Chinese as Tudeng Gusang and Tsering Banjue to death for the murders of Akong and two other men, while an accomplice was sentenced to three years in jail, the state-run China News Service reported late on Sunday.

READ MORE: Founder of first Tibetan monastery in Europe stabbed to death in Chengdu

It cited the authorities as saying that Gusang, who had worked at the Scottish monastery, and Banjue had stabbed Akong, his nephew and a driver to death in a dispute over a 2.7 million yuan (HK$ 3.2 million) payment.

The verdict, posted by the court on social media, said the murders were “brutal” and that the suspects would be “treated severely in accordance with the law”.

Akong, who was in his early 70s, took British citizenship after fleeing Tibet in 1959 and founded the facility in rolling Scottish hills in 1967.

He had the title of Rinpoche, an honorific given to the most respected teachers in Tibetan Buddhism, and his monastery said at the time of his killing that he had been assassinated.