(Yicai) Dec. 29 -- Sun Guofeng, former director of the monetary policy department of the People's Bank of China, has been sentenced to 16 years and six months in prison for accepting bribes, deliberately leaking state secrets, and insider trading.

Sun, 51, who chose not to appeal the verdict handed down by a court in Tianjin on July 27, was also fined CNY13.1 million (USD1.85 million), according to the financial crimes cases announced yesterday by China's top prosecutor.

Sun took advantage of his position to leak policy information to others from 2002 to 2020 and took CNY21 million (USD2.96 million) in bribes, the Supreme People's Procuratorate said. From April 2014 to September 2019, he disclosed policy information that was still confidential to the profit of others.

Sun worked in the PBOC’s monetary policy department from 1996 to 2016 and later stepped in as director of the bank’s Financial Research Institute. He became the monetary policy department's director in August 2018 before being removed from the post in May last year.

The supervision and public security authorities sent Sun's bribery and intentional disclosure of state secrets case to the first branch of the Tianjin Municipal People's Procuratorate on Aug. 18, 2022 and sent his insider trading case there on Feb. 16.

In September, the authorities also charged Fan Yifei, a former PBOC deputy governor, with taking bribes. 

Editor: Martin Kadiev