A senior political advisor in the government of northwest China's Gansu Province has been sentenced to 12 years in jail for taking bribes.

The sentence was handed down at the No. 1 Intermediate People's Court of southwest China's Chongqing Municipality on Monday, the Beijing-based Procuratorial Daily reported Tuesday.

Zhu Zuoyong, 65, vice chairman of the Gansu Provincial Committee of CPPCC (Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference), a political advisory body, was charged with taking bribes worth 1.7 million yuan (218,000 U.S. dollars) from April 1994 to September 2004, the court heard.

He was arrested in June last year. Zhu confessed his crime in the following investigation and turned in all the illicit money and goods, the court heard.

In the last two months, China's prosecutors investigated 32,369 cases, involving 38,457 officials who were accused of taking bribes or dereliction of duty, and more than 17,440 cases involving large sums of money, while 2,632 officials above county-head level were prosecuted or penalized, said Jia Chunwang, procurator-general of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, on Saturday.

Source: Xinhua