A former top manager at China National Coal Group has been jailed for eight years by a Beijing court for taking more than 2.8 million yuan (HK$3.4 million) in bribes.
Beijing No 2 Intermediate People's Court found 59-year-old Zhang Baoshan, one of three deputy general managers at the listed unit of the nation's second-largest coal producer, guilty of taking bribes from three energy companies between 2007 and 2009, the Beijing Morning Post reported yesterday.
Zhang did not indicate that he planned to appeal against the verdict.
The report said Zhang received a lighter sentence because he surrendered himself to justice and had paid back the bribes. Prosecutors said Zhang engaged in corrupt activities during business co-operation between China National Coal and the firms through taking advantage of his position to unlawfully benefit the companies and take bribes from their management. Zhang paid only about three million yuan for a central Beijing apartment valued at almost five million yuan that he bought from the boss of Guangzhou Dayou Coal Sell.
He also received a Beijing golf club membership worth 680,000 yuan from G-Ocean Energy Group, a subsidiary of China National Coal, in May 2009, and 400,000 yuan in cash from a Zhejiang-based energy company in October 2009.
China National Coal's general office and the Beijing court were not available for comment yesterday.