China has handed a suspended death sentence to a telecom executive and sentenced another to 15 years in prison after convicting them of taking 5.1 million dollars in bribes from German electronics giant Siemens AG, said a report seen on Monday.
Shi Wanzhong, 49, was convicted of accepting bribes while he was head of China Mobile Ltd's operations in the eastern province of Anhui from 2002 to 2009, the influential business daily Caixin reported on its website.
A court in Hebi city, in Anhui's neighbouring province of Henan, gave Shi a suspended death sentence. Subject to good behaviour in prison during the two-year suspension, such sentences are normally commuted to up to 20 years in prison.
Shi's initial trial in May was closed to the public and not reported by state media because it was deemed to involve state secrets. The sentence was upheld by a higher court last month.
The same court sentenced Shi's accomplice, Tian Qu, to 15 years in prison for helping him to secure the illegal payments from Siemens, the newspaper said.
It said Shi and Tian were apparently identified following investigations of Siemens business practices by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from 2006.
The SEC investigations concluded that Siemens had poured hundreds of millions of Euros into slush funds used for commercial bribery in contract bids in several countries.
After Siemens agreed to pay record fines totalling 1.33 billion dollars in the United States and Germany in late 2008, Chinese authorities received information on the involvement of Chinese citizens via unspecified diplomatic channels, Caixin said.
US court documents in 2008 said a culture of bribery and impunity had flourished at Siemens AG despite repeated warnings from outside and inside the firm.
In 2007, Siemens China fired about 20 employees in connection with corruption charges but the company declined to give details of the charges.
Siemens China has also declined to comment on the sentencing of Shi and Tian.