Guangdong Provincial Higher People's Court has handed out a death sentence with a two years' reprieve to a former general manager from Hong Kong.

Yang Gaiqing, formerly legal representative and general manager of the Huiwei Industry and Trade Co. Ltd. of Shenzhen City, was convicted of coordinating a smuggling ring and bribery.

The ruling put an end to the marathon trial of Yang's smuggling clique, which has taken three years for investigations and three more years for repeated rounds of litigation.

Liu Hao, another principal accomplice of Yang, was also found guilty of smuggling and was sentenced to death with a two years' probation.

The remaining 10 members of Yang's smuggling team were all convicted of smuggling and sentenced to jail terms ranging from three to ten years, according to the court sources.

The court was told that Yang Gaiqing, aged 50 and a resident of Hong Kong, collaborated with members of his smuggling ring in the trading of special import permits for edible oils and importing permit-required edible oils such as olive oil, soybean oil and rape seed oil from June 1966 through to June 1998.

Through the importing, Yang, a native of Shangshui County of central China's Henan Province, smuggled 827,500 tons of edible oils into the Chinese mainland and evaded over 2.4 billion yuan (about 296 million U.S. dollars) in tariffs.

Yang gave bribes worth about 10 million yuan (1.23 million U.S. dollars) to local Customs officials to facilitate smuggling.

He was first detained in January 2000 and sentenced to death in the first trial by the Intermediate People's Court of Shenzhen City in January 2004.

Source: Xinhua