China sentences former banker to death for taking bribe, court gives reprieve of two years

China’s former deputy central bank governor, Fan Yifei, has been sentenced to death for taking bribes with a two-year reprieve, state media said on Thursday, amid a sweeping anti-graft drive in the financial sector.

Fan was found guilty of illegally accepting property worth more than 386 million yuan ($54.55 million), taking advantage of his senior positions at the central bank and other financial institutions, including China Construction Bank, according to the report, citing a Chinese court.

Following the two-year reprieve, Fan’s death sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment, with no possibility of commutation or parole, state media cited Huanggang Intermediate People’s Court in Hubei province as saying.

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“Fan Yifei accepted bribes of an extremely large amount, the circumstances of his crimes were extremely serious, the social impact was extremely bad, and the interests of the state and the people suffered extremely heavy losses,” the court was quoted as saying.

Fan, 60, is the highest-ranking official at the People’s Bank of China to be arrested under President Xi Jinping’s anti-graft drive in the past decade, in a campaign aimed at weeding out corrupt officials in the financial sector.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Firstpost staff.)