Ex-Shanghai Party boss accepts 18-year jail term

BEIJING (Reuters) - Shanghai's disgraced Communist Party chief, jailed for 18 years this month for corruption, has decided not to appeal, state media said on Tuesday.

Chen Liangyu was found guilty of taking bribes and abuse of power by a court in the northern port city of Tianjin on April 11, becoming the most senior Chinese official imprisoned for graft in a decade. He had been held since 2006.

Chen did not file an appeal in the 10-day period he was allowed and the sentence had thus taken "legal effect", China Central Television said.

The court also confiscated 300,000 yuan ($42,900) of Chen's assets, but cleared him of a charge of dereliction of duty.

It has said the sentence was lenient partly because Chen, widely seen as close to former state president Jiang Zemin, had showed repentance and returned the ill-gotten money.

Chen, 61, was mired in a snowballing scandal over the misuse of social security funds in China's financial hub. More than a dozen senior officials and businessmen have been implicated.

Chen, who lost his seat in the Communist Party's decision-making Politburo, is the highest-ranking Chinese official imprisoned for corruption since Chen Xitong was sacked as Beijing Party boss in 1995 and jailed three years later.

The Shanghai scandal broke in 2006 and involved the misappropriation of more than 30 billion yuan of the city's social security funds.

Chen was accused of illegally authorising the lending of more than 2 billion yuan of the funds to two companies, Chinese media have reported. Prosecutors also accused him of taking 2.4 million yuan in bribes.