A Chinese official who accepted a $325 million bribe has been sentenced to death.

An eastern Chinese court has sentenced a former city official to death for taking bribes worth more than 2.2 billion yuan (£243 million over £325 million) over 30 years.

In the year Yang Yulin, who served in various positions in Nanjing from 1993 to 2023, was found guilty of corruption, abuse of power and embezzlement.

The 69-year-old used his role to secure other engineering contracts, land transfers and financial support in cash and valuables, state media reported.

Yang was investigated as part of President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign, which has cracked down on military ranks and top jobs in banking and other sectors.

Yang, who spent much of his career in Nanjing working on economic and technological development, committed crimes of a “very serious nature” and “caused extraordinary harm to the interests of the government and the people,” a court in the city of Changzhou said Monday.

Since coming to power, President Xi has launched a wave of anti-corruption crackdowns, which critics have seen as a tool to purge political rivals.

While death sentences for white-collar crimes are occasionally carried out, they are rare, especially if the cases involve large sums of money exceeding 1 billion yuan.

example – The former head of finance Lai Xiaomin In the year He was sentenced to 1.8 billion yuan in bribes over a 10-year period in 2021.

Former Inner Mongolia official Li Jianping He was convicted in 2024 of embezzling and taking bribes amounting to more than 3 billion yuan.

In many other cases, courts have imposed suspended prison sentences or death sentences, which are commuted to life imprisonment after a certain period of time.

Convictions have also been reduced when individuals convicted by courts report other crimes.

But while Yang provided the same assistance to authorities, the crime he committed was so “serious” that the assistance was “not sufficient for a lighter punishment,” the Changzhou court said.

Yang pleaded guilty and “ultimately regretted his statement,” state media reported.