South China's Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court Tuesday sentenced the former deputy manager of Shenzhen Huiwei Industrial and Trading Co. Ltd. to death after his conviction on charges involving smuggling.

Liu Hao was accused of being the ringleader of a smuggling operation which smuggled in 820,000 tons of edible oil avoiding taxes of 2.4 billion yuan.

Zhu Haotang, chief of Huizhou Customs, was sentenced to life imprisonment, for turning a blind eye. Huizhou Foreign Shipping Agents Co., who helped the ring ship the smuggled oil into Huizhou Port, was fined 2.4 billion yuan (US$290 million). Another 10 people were sentenced to seven to 15 years' imprisonment.

Liu and his men smuggled 267 shipments of edible oil weighing 820,000 tons into the country and evaded taxes of 2.4 billion yuan by using forged documents and bribing customs officials from June 1996 to July 1998.

Liu evaded huge taxes by declaring only a tiny part of the shipments to customs. The court was told he had been helped by key officials in the import administration departments in Huizhou.

The smuggling scandal came to light during a criminal investigation of Zhao Yucun, the ex-chief of Shenzhen Customs.

Zhao was investigated in 2000 for allegedly taking more than 9.17 million yuan in goods and cash in bribes from smugglers. Investigators began to suspect the Shenzhen Huiwei Industrial and Trade Co. Ltd. of smuggling cooking oil when Zhao' s case was handed over to Shenzhen procuratorate department.

(Shenzhen Daily August 7, 2003)