Bo Xilai Found Guilty of Corruption By Chinese Court

A Chinese court has found disgraced former top politician Bo Xilai guilty of bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power.

The former party chief of Chongqing was sentenced to life imprisonment, but has the right to appeal.

He had denied all the charges against him in a fiery defence at his trial.

Bo was removed from office last year amid a scandal which saw his wife convicted for the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood.

The verdict was handed down by the Intermediate People’s Court in Jinan, Shandong province.

Passing sentence the judge told Bo that he had damaged China’s national interests and the interests of its people, wrongfully using his position in power to receive bribes totalling 20 million Chinese Yuan ($3.2m; £2m).

He rejected Bo’s claims that his confession to the crimes was acquired through illegal means such as torture and interrogation, and said it therefore stood.

The BBC’s John Sudworth, outside the court, said that the judge completely demolished Bo’s defence arguments.

During Bo’s trial last month the court took the unprecedented step of releasing details about proceedings on its Weibo microblog.

Posted by Editor on September 22, 2013. Filed under WORLD. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry