Yu Zhendong, a corrupt banker in the South China's Guangdong Province accused of embezzling huge amount of public money before fleeing to the United States, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison by a court in Jiangmen City.

Yu is the first corrupt Chinese official to be repatriated since China ratified the United Nation's Convention Against Corruption in October, 2005.

The Intermediate People's Court of Jiangmen City, Guangdong Province, on Friday sentenced Yu 12 years in prison and ordered confiscation of 1 million yuan (125,000 dollars) on the charges of graft and embezzlement of public funds.

Yu was formerly the head of the Kaiping city branch of the Bank of China (BOC), one of China's four biggest state-owned commercial banks.

Yu collaborated with Xu Chaofan, former chief of BOC Kaiping Branch and Xu Guojun, a manager, in embezzling 82.47 million U.S. dollars from the united fund of the BOC. They made use of loopholes and then had the money remitted to their private companies overseas to cover corporate expenditures, share and exchange trading, expenses in their personal life and gambling.

In the meantime, the three also collaborated in applying for loans with BOC Kaiping branch using the names of other enterprises and embezzled 132 million U.S. dollars, 273 million yuan (about 33.7 million US dollars) and 20 million Hong Kong dollars for operation of their private companies overseas. They also obtained 67.3 million Hong Kong dollars in illicit returns from private overseas companies.

Yu Zhendong, Xu Chaofan and Xu Guojun fled to Canada and the United States via Hong Kong in October 2001.

During his stay in Hong Kong, Yu traded shares for cash and transferred all the remaining sum of the money he embezzled to the bank accounts of his relatives or casinos in the United States and Canada.

Yu was sentenced to 144 months in prison in a federal court in Las Vegas in February 2004 over money laundering, entering the United States with forged documents, and immigration fraud.

He was returned to China two months later on China's promise to exempt him from death. Before Yu, China's suspects of severe economic crimes had never been sent back from the United States through former law procedure.

(For more biz stories, please visit Industry Updates)