The former transport chief of east China's Zhejiang Province has been sentenced to life imprisonment for taking bribes, Huzhou Intermediate People's Court announced on Wednesday.

Zhao Zhanqi, 58, had received 6.2 million yuan (US$816,000) in bribes from 1994 to 2006, when he held the posts of vice director of the provincial development and planning commission, deputy head of the Xiaoshan airport construction headquarters and head of the provincial communications department, the court heard.

Zhao was arrested in September last year and went to trial in April on charges of taking bribes, usually under the guise of "consultation fees" and "business loans" often paid through his girlfriend or his son, and using his authority to influence project tenders and contracts.

In 1997, Zhao took 550,000 yuan (US$72,300) through his mistress Wang Peiying from the Longyuan Construction Group Co. Ltd, and helped the company beat 70 other bidders for the contract to build the airport terminal.

In return for bribes, he helped other firms seal construction contracts on luggage handling facilities and a filling station at the airport.

In 2005, he helped the Hangzhou Guoyi Expressway and Bridge Construction Co., Ltd win an eight-billion-yuan contract on the highway circling the Hangzhou city. He had hinted to Yu Guoxiang, manager of the company, that he needed money for his son's wedding. Yu "loaned" three million yuan to Zhao, and the money was never returned.

The court heard that about 3.5 million yuan (US$460,000) had been retrieved, and the rest of the money remained to be recovered.

Zhao's case is the latest in a series of corruption convictions involving Chinese transport officials. Most of China's transportation infrastructure projects are funded and supervised by local governments, meaning they must be approved and supervised by powerful local government officials.

So far, 18 heads of communications departments in China have been convicted of corruption charges.

Last year, Wang Xingyao, former director of the Anhui transport department, was sentenced ten years in prison for accepting bribes totaling 135,300 yuan from a construction company in southern Guangdong Province and having more than 830,000 yuan in assets for which he could not account.

Earlier in 2006, Zhang Quan, former deputy director of the transport department in Hebei Province, was jailed for 14 years for taking more than two million yuan in bribes. The case involved 26 other local officials and a total of 40 million yuan.

In December, Lu Wanli, a transport official in southwest China's Guizhou Province, was executed after being convicted of taking millions of dollars in bribes.

Lu, former director of the Guizhou Provincial Department of Transportation, was found to have accepted more than 25.6 million yuan in bribes from June 1998 to January 2002.

On Sunday, the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued a document targeting "new forms of corruption", including bribes disguised as stocks, houses and gambling wins, and bribes given after their tenures or through relatives or other third parties. In some circumstances, an official may not be the owner of the bribe, but he or she can still be convicted of bribery because the intention of the briber is clear, the document read.

(Xinhua News Agency July 12, 2007)