A provincial court has upheld a sentence of 10 years in prison for a top transport official in east China's Anhui Province for taking bribes and failing to account for his assets.

Anhui Provincial Higher People's Court also ordered the seizure of 150,000 yuan (US$18,900) of assets from Wang Xingyao, 56, former director of the Anhui Transport Department.

The court found Wang guilty of accepting bribes totaling 135,300 yuan from a construction company in southern Guangdong Province and he had more than 830,000 yuan in assets for which he could not account.

Wang was arrested in December 2004 on corruption charges. He was sentenced to 10 years in imprisonment by the Intermediate People's Court of Anhui's Bengbu City at the initial trial held on July 11 this year. Wang lodged an appeal after the ruling was announced.

China has stepped up efforts to punish corruption in the transport sector recently.

Earlier this year, Zhang Quan, former deputy director of the transport department in Hebei Province, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for taking over two million yuan in bribes. The case involved 26 other local officials and a total of 40 million yuan.

In mid-December last year, another transport official Lu Wanli in southwest China's Guizhou Province was executed on charges of taking millions of dollars in bribes.

(Xinhua News Agency December 30, 2006)