A Chinese court handed down a death sentence on Wednesday for Zhang Zhongsheng, former vice-mayor of the city of Luliang, who has been convicted on corruption charges. The court found Zhang accepted more than 1.04 billion yuan in bribes from 1997 to 2013, and in return he eased the way for entrepreneurs in the city, approving and granting licences for coal mine mergers and other projects, Xinhua reported. Among them, two cases exceeded 200 million yuan (£22.5 million) in value; and over 88 million yuan (£10 million) had been requested by Mr Zhang from his contacts. The court breathlessly charged that Zhang “crazily took bribes from 1997 to 2013 and did not restrain himself after the 18th National Party Congress and caused extraordinarily great losses to the nation and its people and should be punished severely by law.”

In other words, he kept taking bribes after Chinese President Xi Jinping launched his much-ballyhooed war on corruption, which was very bad form on his part.
A Chinese court sentences Zhang Zhongsheng, the former Vice Mayor of Lüliang, Shanxi, to death. Zhongsheng was convicted of accepting bribes totaling 1.04 billion yuan (US$160 million).