A former chairwoman of the Heilongjiang Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and senior provincial Communist Party of China (CPC) official was given a two-year suspended death sentence on Thursday for taking bribes.

Beijing No.1 Intermediate People's Court passed its verdict after finding that Han Guizhi had accepted 7.02 million yuan (US$875,000) in bribes from many officials between 1993 and 2003, all of which it said has since been recovered.

One of those who was found to have bribed her was Ma De, the former Suihua City CPC secretary who received the same sentence in July for taking bribes worth 6 million yuan (US$740,000) from 1992 to 2002.

The court said Han took advantage of her posts as provincial deputy CPC secretary and as vice-director and later director of the provincial CPC committee's Organization Department to promote bribe givers.

Born in 1943, Han was appointed a standing committee member and Organization Department director of the Heilongjiang provincial CPC committee in 1996. She became deputy CPC secretary of Heilongjiang in 1997.

Han was given the top CPPCC post in 2002 and reselected the following year.

She was removed from her posts in June last year, and expelled from the CPC five months later.

In April, her case was transferred from Heilongjiang to Beijing.

(Xinhua News Agency, China Daily December 16, 2005)