Chinese Court Sentences Former Mayor of Nanjing for Corruption

A Chinese court sentenced a former mayor of Nanjing to 15 years in prison on Tuesday for accepting bribes, the latest senior official to be jailed in President Xi Jinping's sweeping campaign against graft.

The intermediate court in the northern city of Yantai said it had also seized tens of millions of yuan in assets, including a Dodge car and a painting worth 30,000 yuan ($4,845), from Ji Jianye, who served in Nanjing from 2010 until he was removed from his post in October 2013.

Xi's fight has extended to almost every corner of the country, exceeding earlier campaigns to weed out graft in both its depth and breadth.

Ji rose through the ranks from the early 1990s in coastal Jiangsu province, serving in various cities including former President Jiang Zemin's home town of Yangzhou, before becoming mayor of Nanjing, the provincial capital.

The court found him guilty of accepting bribes, favours and sweetheart deals from a range of businessmen, including Zhu Xingliang, an interior decoration billionaire and founder of Suzhou Gold Mantis Construction Decoration Co Ltd. Zhu was arrested in January 2014 on suspicion of corruption.

Xi has made the fight against endemic corruption a central theme of his administration, vowing to pursue both high-flying "tigers", or senior officials, and lower-ranking "flies".

On Friday the government said prosecutors had charged former domestic security chief Zhou Yongkang with bribery, abuse of power and intentional disclosure of state secrets. Zhou is the most senior Chinese official to be ensnared in a graft scandal since the Communist Party swept to power in 1949.($1 = 6.1919 yuan)