国内英语新闻:33 convicted for criminal offense in SW China electoral fraud: report

BEIJING, March 13 (Xinhua) -- A total of 33 people in southwest China's Sichuan Province were convicted of criminal offense during an electoral fraud in 2011 in the city of Nanchong, according to a work report on the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP).

No further details, neither the 33 people's names and titles nor their respective verdicts, were provided in the report to be delivered by Procurator-General Cao Jianming.

An earlier report published last September said 477 people, most of them Communist Party of China (CPC) members and officials, were involved in the fraud case which saw 230 Party officials took bribes totaling 16.72 million yuan (about 2.57 million U.S. dollars).

The Xinhua report said 33 people were expelled from the CPC, and their public posts stripped of. Their cases were transferred to judicial organs, the report said.

Yang Jianhua, former Party chief of Yilong County, was reportedly sentenced to 20 years in prison for embezzling 800,000 yuan of public funds to bribe potential members of the CPC Nanchong municipal committee in order to have them elect himself to its standing committee.

Former Nanchong Party chief Liu Hongjian was given three years for dereliction of duty, the report said.