Former Anhui court president gets 15 years for bribery

Zhang Jian, former president of the Anhui High People's Court, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for accepting bribes of about 71.8 million yuan ($11.1 million), a court in East China's Fujian province said on Tuesday.

The Xiamen Intermediate People's Court also imposed a fine of 5 million yuan and ordered Zhang to turn over the bribes he accepted, as well as relevant interest to the state treasury.

Zhang said he would not appeal to a higher court.

From 1995 to 2019, Zhang illegally accepted money and gifts worth 71.8 million yuan by taking advantage of his posts, including head of the prison bureau in Hubei province, vice-president of the Hubei High People's Court and president of the Anhui High People's Court, to help others profit from construction projects, personnel promotion and case handling, according to the court in Fujian.

Zhang did not get 24.03 million yuan out of the 71.8 million yuan, it said.

The court said Zhang's behavior constituted the crime of bribery and the amount of the bribes he obtained was extremely large.

But given that Zhang did not obtain some of the bribes, voluntarily confessed to a majority of the facts investigators had not known and took the initiative to return the illicit gains, the court handed out a lenient sentence.