An executive at a major Chinese state-owned mining company was sentenced to death for taking bribes and embezzling more than 10 million dollars, state media reported Monday.

Yu Weiping, deputy manager of Yunnan Copper Group, took bribes of more than 4 million dollars, and embezzled over 41 million yuan (6 million dollars), the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Yu also misappropriated 27 million yuan and lent the money to others, Xinhua quoted the Intermediate People's Court in Kunming, capital of the southwestern province of Yunnan, as saying.

Yu's boss Zou Shaolu, former general manager of the group, was sentenced to life in prison for taking bribes of more than 19 million yuan between 2003 and 2007, the agency reported.

Zou was given a lighter sentence because he turned himself in, according to Xinhua.

A third executive, Wang Jianwei, the former general manager of a real estate company affiliated to the group, was jailed for 20 years for taking bribes of more than 4 million yuan.

Yunnan Copper Group employs around 20,000 people and made sales of 39.2 billion yuan in 2007, according to Xinhua.

China's ruling Communist Party has struggled in recent years to contain rampant graft involving officials and executives, with leaders regularly warning that such episodes threaten the party's legitimacy.

earlier related report

Chinese official sacked after photos show luxury tastes

A Chinese communist official has been sacked from his government post after photos on the Internet showed him wearing a designer watch and smoking luxury brand cigarettes, an official said Monday.

Zhou Jiugeng, head of a district housing bureau in Nanjing city, became infamous after web users posted photos of him wearing the 100,000-yuan (14,600-dollar) luxury watch and smoking 150 yuan-a-pack cigarettes.

Other Internet postings in popular portals Mop and Tianya suggested Zhou had other habits well beyond a civil servant's means, such as driving to work in a Cadillac.

Public anger against Zhou's lavish spending triggered a local government probe into his finances, state media reported this month.

"Zhou has been dismissed for two reasons. One is inappropriate remarks to the public, the other is using government money to buy luxury cigarettes," a city anti-corruption official, who gave his surname as Jin, told AFP.

The dismissal was announced Sunday, Jin said, adding that the city government's disciplinary committee was still investigating other accusations against him.

Zhou first came under fire when he said in early December that real estate developers should be punished if they sold properties below cost.

Angry home-buyers who cannot afford apartments that many feel are over-priced fired back and made him the target of a grassroots online investigation.

It was these comments that Jin was referring to when he said Zhou had been sacked for making "inappropriate remarks."

Zhou has reportedly said the luxury watch in the photos was a fake.