A former vice chief of China's Sports Lottery Administration was sentenced to ten-and-a-half years in prison for taking a US$20,000 bribe and accepting an expensive cell phone, a Beijing court ruled on Wednesday.

Zhang Weihua, the former legal representative and vice director of the Sports Lottery Administrative Center, was handed the sentence, Beijing Evening News reported today.

Liu Feng, the director of the center's printing department, was sentenced four years behind bars for his role in the case, the report said.

Zhang accepted US$20,000 in cash and a cell phone valued at about 70,000 yuan (US$ 9,481.85) from Beijing Nanhai Sunshine Science and Development Company in return for giving the firm the rights to supply imported paper materials for lottery tickets. The firm didn't have a license for import and export businesses, the report said.

Liu accepted US$10,000 and another 10,000 yuan from Beijing Nanhai in 2003 and 2004, the report added.

The duo, however, returned the bribe money in 2005 during a national audit launched by the National Audit Office, the report said.

Zhang was arrested last August for alleged power abuse after the center was found to have misused lottery income that caused about 23.41 million yuan in losses, according to a previous report in China Youth Daily.

(Shanghai Daily December 20, 2007)