By Liu Meng

A local court in Shanxi Province yesterday sentenced China Central Television (CCTV) reporter Li Min to three years in prison with four years’ suspension for taking bribes, according to China News Service.

Li confessed to the crime and said she would not appeal.

The Xinghualing District at Taiyuan, Shanxi Province said the amount involved in the bribery case was 37,000 yuan ($5,416).

On December 4 last year, Li was arrested in Beijing on suspicion of taking bribes from a businessman who was invovled in an investigative story Li was working on.

Zhou Ze, a law professor at China Youth University for Political Sciences, who was once Li’s lawyer, told the Global Times that he had learned of the sentence.

Li, a reporter working on law-related TV programs, traveled to Taiyuan for an investigation into the alleged abuse of power at Xinghualing District Procuratorate.

At that time, the procuratorate was handling a land dispute between a Shanxi-based businessman and Wu Xiaohui, a Hunan-based businessman.

Xinghualing District Procuratorate suspected that Li took bribes from Wu and that was the reason Li was investigating the alleged abuse of power at Xinghualing District Procuratorate.

When prosecutors in Taiyuan began to investigate Li, they found that Wu Xiaohua, Wu Xiaohui’s brother, had deposited 220,000 yuan ($32,208) into Li’s bank account, which had then been used by Li to buy a car.

The procuratorate of Xinghualing came to Beijing and arrested her in her apartment.

On December 8, 2008, He Shusheng, chief prosecutor of Xinghualing District, was quoted by the Legal Mirror as saying, “We were absolutely right in arresting Li. We had solid evidence. Li’s crime is serious and will cause execrable influence on society.”

Professor Zhou told the Global Times, however, that under current law, charging the reporter with bribery is not reasonable. “Li’s conduct violates the professional ethics of journalists, but it is not a crime. Her punishment should come from her workplace or from public opinion, not from the court,” Zhou said.

Wang Anna contributed to this story