A former manager of the State-owned China Grain Reserves Corporation (Sinograin) was sentenced to life imprisonment for taking 14.07 million yuan ($2.3 million) in bribes by a local court in Henan Province.

Li Changxuan, former head of Sinograin's Henan branch, was also convicted of being in possession of a large amount of property without a clear source, reads the verdict by Hebi Intermediate People's Court Saturday.

Li's wife, Jiang Xiufeng, and mistress Ye Xiaowan were given prison sentences of seven and eight years for the charge of helping Li take bribes. Apart from the bribes, Li had $9 million yuan, the source of which could not be traced. The largest amount he took was 4.2 million yuan from a project contractor.

The Xinhua News Agency reported Li was involved in 65 incidents of bribe-taking. Twenty-five heads of subsidiary grain depots had offered him over 3 million yuan in bribes.

Founded in 2000, Sinograin is responsible for purchasing and storing grain to ensure food security.

A minimum price for national purchase of grain was set in 2006 to protect the interests of farmers, and companies that buy the grain could be subsidized by the government should they offer this minimum price when the market price dipped lower. Henan, a huge production base of staple crops in the country, sees an annual output that accounts for some 10 percent of the national total output. Subsidies wired to the province can be as high as hundreds of millions of yuan.

Local grain traders offered over 3 million yuan in bribes to Li so as to be listed as one of those companies.

"It's unavoidable for corruption to exist in Sinograin, especially when it holds great power without supervision," an official with the Henan grain authorities told the China Business News Tuesday.

Li was put under investigation in December 2011.

Global Times