The former head of transportation in east China's Zhejiang Province is to stand trial on charges of receiving more than six million yuan in bribes, Huzhou Intermediate People's Court has announced.

Zhao Zhanqi, 58, former provincial transportation bureau director, allegedly received 5.6 million yuan and 76,000 US dollars in bribes from 1994 to 2006, when he also held the posts of Hangzhou city traffic management bureau director, vice director of the provincial development and planning commission, and deputy head of the Xiaoshan airport construction headquarters.

The charges say Zhao took bribes to use his offices to influence project tenders and contracts. The bribes were disguised as consultation fees, business costs and loans, often paid through his girlfriend or his son.

The People's Procuratorate of Huzhou charged Zhao, who was arrested in September 2006, with abusing his office for his own profit and receiving bribes. Huzhou Intermediate People's Court is yet to set a date for his trial.

Most of China's transportation infrastructure projects are funded and supervised by local governments, meaning that must be approved and supervised by powerful local government officials.

Zhao's case is the latest in a series of corruption convictions involving Chinese transport officials.

Last year, Wang Xingyao, former director of the Anhui transport department, was sentenced ten years in prison for accepting bribes totaling 135,300 yuan from a construction company in southern Guangdong Province and having more than 830,000 yuan in assets for which he could not account.

Earlier in 2006, Zhang Quan, former deputy director of the transport department in Hebei Province, was jailed for 14 years for taking more than two million yuan in bribes. The case involved 26 other local officials and a total of 40 million yuan.

In December, Lu Wanli, a transport official in southwest China's Guizhou Province, was executed after being convicted of taking millions of dollars in bribes.

Lu, former director of the Guizhou Provincial Department of Transportation, was found to have accepted more than 25.6 million yuan in bribes from June 1998 to January 2002.

(Xinhua News Agency March 22, 2007)