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SHANGHAI'S Higher People's Court yesterday upheld a judge's decision to jail former property tycoon Zhou Zhengyi for 16 years on five charges.
Zhou, also known as Chau Ching-ngai, has no other avenue of appeal.
Zhou was detained in October 2006 amid a probe of the city's social security funds scandal that brought down former Shanghai Party chief Chen Liangyu and other city leaders. Zhou had served an earlier three-year prison term for fraud and stock manipulation.
Zhou was sentenced on November 30 to 16 years in prison following a trial for bribery, tax receipt forgery and embezzlement.
Zhou, 46, is the former legal representative of the Shanghai-based Nongkai Development Group.
The Shanghai No. 2 Intermediate People's Court found him guilty of three bribery charges, the misappropriation of funds and the forging of value-added tax receipts.
The court also fined Nongkai 3.35 million yuan (US$453,000) for bribery and forging VAT receipts.
Zhou and his company spent 1.27 million yuan bribing government officials and 400,000 yuan on corporate staff to make illegal profits, the court said.
They also forged 8,435 VAT receipts, involving 1.2 billion yuan, and manipulated the stock market.
Zhou spent 200,000 yuan bribing government officials and colluded with others to misappropriate 200 million yuan from the Shanghai Hero (Group) Co Ltd.
The court said the punishment was lenient because Zhou had confessed and returned all the misappropriated funds.
Zhou, who started his business life as a noodle salesman and was once the 11th richest man on China's mainland with a net worth estimated at US$320 million, was sentenced to three years by the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People's Court in June 2004 for falsifying registered-capital reports and share-price manipulation.
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