Former senior Shanghai official jailed for corruption

Dai Haibo, former deputy secretary-general of the Shanghai municipal government, was sentenced to nine years in prison and fined 2 million yuan ($294,000) for taking bribes and concealing deposits overseas by Shanghai No 1 Intermediate People's Court on Friday.

The court said Dai abused his powers to gain benefits for others in exchange for bribes between 1998 to 2015, when he was general manager of the State-owned developer Zhangjiang Group, deputy Party secretary and later deputy head of Pudong New District and head of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization, among other roles.

The 55-year-old took bribes of more than 9.9 million yuan over the years, it said.

The court also found that Dai opened bank, stock and fund accounts at a Citibank branch in Hong Kong in 2001 but never declared the property as required. As of March 2015, when he was put under investigation for suspected serious violations of discipline and law, there was more than 1.58 million yuan in these accounts.

The court said it had been lenient with Dai, who also served as former executive deputy director of the administrative committee of the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone between September 2013 and September 2014, because he had confessed to his crimes and all illegally acquired money and goods involved in the case had been recovered.