A senior Beijing official was yesterday sentenced to death for murdering his mistress and taking bribes of nearly 600,000 yuan ($83,000).

Xu Zhiyuan, former vice-chairman of the Fangshan Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and director of the Fangshan Party committee office, was found to have maintained a "malfeasant relationship" with his female subordinate surnamed Chen starting in February 1999, the Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court said.

Chen went missing on Jan 31, 2006, after receiving a phone call. Her husband reported her disappearance to local police.

The husband went to the office where she worked to search for clues and found a diary in her drawer, which exposed her six-year love affair with Xu, the Beijing News reported.

In investigations, Xu admitted his relationship with Chen, but initially claimed they had broken up six months earlier.

However, the diary contained more recent entries that expressed Chen's anger at Xu, saying he was a liar and that she would not let him live happily.

Investigators also found a text message on Xu's mobile phone sent by Chen on the morning of January 31 saying he had hurt her.

Xu later admitted he had hired his former driver Liu Xiaoming, who also received the death sentence yesterday, to kill Chen.

"She not only sent messages threatening my daughter, she also disturbed my family," the Beijing News report quoted Xu as saying.

He asked Liu, who ran a paint plant, to kill Chen in return for waiving a 100,000-yuan debt the driver owed him.

Liu said when Chen arrived at his plant, he choked her to death and then burned her body, the report said.

In a separate case, Cui Baohong, the former head of Heshun county in Shanxi province, was jailed for 20 years for graft amounting to more than 9 million yuan, the Xinhua News Agency reported yesterday.

Cui was convicted by an intermediate court on Monday of extorting 2.45 million yuan, misappropriating 3.9 million yuan and accepting 3 million yuan in bribes.

Heshun is one of China's most impoverished counties.

When the official was arrested, it was discovered the former county head had four apartments in the provincial capital Taiyuan, owned 18 cars and had 4.11 million yuan in cash.

In another case, Yu Guohua, vice-mayor of the city of Jilin, was ousted from the Party and stripped of his post for "serious violations of discipline", Xinhua reported yesterday.

"Yu Guohua used his position to receive and solicit a large amount of bribes, illegally possessed firearms, held corrupt morals and maintained a mistress," the report said.

Party disciplinarian officials have handed the case over for prosecution through the legal system, it said.

Two weeks ago, Wang Zheng, former deputy head of Chongqing's prosperous Yuzhong district was also sentenced to death for graft with a two-year reprieve.

He was convicted of accepting more than 2.23 million yuan in bribes.

(China Daily January 16, 2008)