A former senior trade official in eastern China's Anhui Province who read a letter of remorse that was allegedly cribbed from another crooked official was sentenced to life in prison for corruption and taking bribes today, an Anhui Court announced.

Zhang Shaocang, 55, former director of the Business and Trade Department of Anhui's Provincial Economic Planning Committee, was convicted of abusing his power and taking more than seven million yuan (US$927,152) in bribes since 1992, the Intermediate People's Court in Anhui's Fuyang City said today.

Zhang was also said to have taken advantage of his post as the general manager and Party boss of the state-owned Anhui Energy Investment Co to receive 28 bribes worth almost 1.34 million yuan along with US$22,300, 2,000 euros (US$2,733.8) and HK$148,000 (US$18,973.6) from 1989 to 2006, the court said.

He also took a golden watch worth HK$33,000, a 22,000 yuan shopping card and a bribe of one million yuan from a local securities company during the period, the court ruled.

The fraudulent official came into the spotlight of Chinese media after he read a four-page self-criticism letter at the end of his trial on July 11.

The Anhui native suddenly broke his lengthy silence that day and read the letter in tears as he tried to explain why the son of a farmer would end up involved in corruption.

The letter, full of regret and remorse, was found to have several similarities with that of Zhu Fuzhong, a disgraced Party boss from Tong'an Town in the southwestern Chengdu City, Sichuan Province.

Zhu's remorse letter, entitled "My mistakes happen without any scrutiny" was published in the May 29 issue of the Beijing-based Procuratorial Daily this year, a newspaper that is widely circulated in prisons, the report said.

It has been suggested that Zhang might have seen the article and plagiarized parts of it for his own letter.

(Shanghai Daily September 7, 2007)