A Chinese court on Thursday sentenced Xi Xiaoming, a former senior judge of supreme people’s court, to life imprisonment after being indicted for corruption.
A court in the northern city of Tianjin found him guilty of accepting 115 million Yuan ($16.78 million) in bribes between 1996 and 2015.
A member of the ruling Chinese Communist party for 40 years, Xiaoming was accused of breaching confidentiality rules and leaking secrets related to judicial work.
He was the number four official in the Supreme People’s court, where he specialised in economic law cases.
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Xi is the latest official to fall foul of a sweeping crackdown on graft, following the downfall of Zhou Yongkang, the former domestic security chief whose brief included law enforcement and courts.
Yongkang was ousted by President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign and jailed for life in 2015.
Xiaoming, a native of eastern Jiangsu province, admitted his guilt and has repented and so received a lighter sentence of life imprisonment instead of a possible death sentence.
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According to his official biography, he rose from working as a policeman in the city of Shenyang in the 1970s to the highest rank of the judiciary, where he was also a member of the court’s leading party members’ group.
China’s leaders have pledged to continue combating graft, seen as crucial to the party’s survival, and have vowed to go after “tigers” in senior positions as well as lowly “flies”.
