Seven years jail for China drug bribe case

A former deputy secretary general of the China Pharmaceutical Association, Liu Yongjiu, has been sentenced to a prison term of seven years for taking and passing on 160,000 renminbi ($21,906) in bribes. The defendant, who has lodged an appeal, claimed that he handed the money to Cao Wenzhuang, the former head of the drug registration division of the State Food and Drug Administration (Marketletters passim). The latter has been given a two-year stay of execution for his own death sentence for receiving 2.0 million renminbi in bribes.

The Xicheng District Court in Beijing could have inflicted a sterner punishment on Mr Liu, despite the fact that he was not an employee of the SFDA. However, the fact that he made a full confession before being arrested and returned funds he had obtained illegally was taken into consideration by judges.