Lou Xiaoping, former deputy president of the Higher People's Court of Hainan Province, has been sentenced to 11 years imprisonment for taking bribes and being unable to explain how he obtained his property. 
  
The ruling was handed down on Tuesday by the Intermediate People's Court of the same province. According to the ruling, Lou will also be deprived of his political rights for two years.
  
The court was told that in December 1996, the government of Sanya, a city on the southern tip of Hainan Island, published a document deciding to retrieve the land use right of 566 hectares of land managed by a local farm.
 
Ye Shigui, leader of the farm, went to Wen Zhipeng, an official with the administrative review section of Hainan Provincial Legal Affairs Bureau, demanding a reversal of the city government's decision and offered a bribe of 600,000 yuan (US$72,289).
  
Wen, who was later convicted, stopped 210,000 yuan of the bribe money in May 1997 and deposited the remainder into a new bank account for Lou, who was then deputy head of the provincial legal affairs bureau and put in charge of administrative reviews. 
  
So at a working meeting convened four days later to solve the problem about the disputed patch of land, Lou took stand and insisted that the farm should have back the right to use the disputed land.
  
Lou was promoted to the post of deputy president of Hainan Higher People's Court in September 1998. By then, two thirds of the money in the bank account reserved for share trading were lost in Lou's unsuccessful transaction.           
  
Lou was also unable to produce a legitimate source of another 853,000 yuan (US$103,062) in his personal property. 

(Xinhua News Agency December 1, 2004)