Judges from the criminal court of the Shaanxi High People's Court traveled to Qincheng Prison in a northern suburb of Beijing to give a final verdict on Zhang, who was the former head of the Shaanxi Public Security Department, reported Xi'an-based Chinese Business View yesterday.

The judges opened a special court in the prison, where the suspect has been in custody for more than one year.

After taking HK$950,000 and a 50,000 yuan (US$6,000) bribe from Lai's company during 1990-93, Zhang, who was in charge of exit and entry administration, had Hong Kong passports issued to 58 people including Lai and his relatives, it said.

After the case was placed on file, a total of 410,000 yuan (US$49,500) in bribes was recovered; and last month, another two officials from the public security department who were involved in the case were sentenced to 10 years imprisonment respectively.

Earlier this year, the Xi'an Intermediate People's Court had given first-instance judgment on Zhang's case, but he was not satisfied with the verdict and lodged an appeal to a higher court.

The Shaanxi Provincial High People's Court then dismissed Zhang's appeal and upheld the original judgment.

Lai Changxing, the former president of Yuanhua Group based in Fujian Province's Xiamen, was accused of running a smuggling ring that brought billions of US dollars' worth of goods into China in the mid-1990s and of bribing dozens of government officials to avoid paying taxes and duties.

Dozens of senior officials in Xiamen and a couple of others in Beijing had already been convicted in 2000.

Last month, Lai, who fled to Canada in 1999 with his family, tried to appeal an immigration panel's decision to reject a request for political asylum for him and his wife. But Canadian immigration officials denied Lai's refugee bid by arguing he is trying to avoid criminal prosecution, reports said.

(China Daily July 17, 2002)