Cheng, a former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, was sentenced to death with all political rights stripped for life on July 31 at the first instance trial by the intermediate people's court.

The Beijing Higher People's Court on August 22 rejected Cheng Kejie's appeal, upholding the verdict at the first instance trial by Beijing Intermediate People's Court and then submitted the case to the Supreme People's Court for approval in accordance with China's Criminal Procedural Law.

The Supreme People's Court confirmed that Cheng, while serving as deputy secretary of the Chinese Communist Party's Committee of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and chairman of the people's government of Guangxi, had abused his power to take large bribes, in collaboration with his mistress Li Ping.

The Supreme People's Court also found that Cheng and his mistress had conspired to amass wealth for their planned marriage after divorcing their spouses. The two worked out a scheme under which Li would serve as an agent to find people willing to pay bribes to Cheng, so that Cheng could profit illegally from them by abusing his post as chairman of the people's government of Guangxi.

According to the plan, the two accepted bribes and deposited the money in overseas banks, which justified the guilty verdict given to Cheng at the first instance, the Supreme People's Court said.

As a senior government official, Cheng took huge amount of bribes, seriously violated the normal working order of government institutions, tarnished the clean and honest image of government personnel, discredited the fine reputation of government officials, and thus should be harshly dealt with in accordance with the law, the Supreme People's Court said.

Although Cheng at one time expressed his willingness to return the bribes to the state, the actual retrieval of the ill-gotten money was possible due to the cooperation of Li Ping, and Cheng ultimately did not play a substantial role in giving the money back.

The Supreme People's Court ruled that the evidence against Cheng is true and sufficient, and that he had been judged in accordance with law and given the proper sentence.

The Supreme People's Court approved Cheng's death sentence on September 7 after further deliberations by the judicial committee of the Supreme People's Court.

(People’s Daily)