China sentenced to death a former vice mayor of the...

China sentenced to death a former vice mayor of the northeastern city of Shenyang for his involvement in a web of corruption around City Hall, state television reported.
Ma Xiangdong was suspected of gambling millions of dollars of public money in Macau casinos and taking bribes from officials when he was vice mayor of the capital of Liaoning province, state media have said.
Courts handed death sentences to Ma and Shenyang public property chief Guo Jiuci and gave suspended death sentences to former mayor Mu Suixin and two other city officials, China Central Television (CCTV) said.
Mayor Mu was forced to resign in December 2000 over a spectacular scandal linking mobsters to top officials in Shenyang, China's fifth largest city.
CCTV said Mu had accepted bribes worth more than 6.6 million yuan ($797,500) and 2.6 million yuan in property he could not account for from 1993 to 2000.
But the former mayor's death sentence was suspended with a two-year reprieve because he admitted and expressed regret for his crimes, it said. Suspended death sentences can be commuted to life imprisonment if prisoners behave in jail.
Ning Xianjie, former director of the Shenyang City Construction Committee, and Zhou Wei, former head of the Shenyang Tobacco Bureau were the two middle-ranking former government officials who received suspended death sentences for taking bribes.
Courts in Liaoning and Jiangsu provinces gave prison sentences to 11 other Shenyang officials charged with corruption and accepting bribes, CCTV said.