China rail official sentenced to death for graft

BEIJING (AP) — A Chinese court has sentenced a former top railways official to death with a two-year reprieve for taking nearly $8 million in bribes.

The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate Court announced the verdict Friday against Zhang Shuguang, formerly the deputy chief engineer for the now-defunct Railway Ministry. The court also confiscated all of Zhang's personal assets.

Suspended death sentences are usually commuted to life imprisonment in China.

Zhang's conviction comes more than a year after the former railway minister, Liu Zhijun, was convicted of corruption and received a suspended death sentence as part of a broader anti-graft campaign under President Xi Jinping.

Liu and Zhang oversaw the rapid expansion of high-speed rail in China but also fostered a vast and deeply corrupt ministry empire that ran its own courts and police.