A company owner was sentenced to death for swindling 33.27 million yuan (4.8 million U.S. dollars) from illegal fund-raising in east China's Jiangsu Province.

Xu Guancheng, who set up Beijing Guancheng Company in 2003 and Nanjing Guancheng Company in 2004, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve. He was found to have fabricated high returns and swindled 33.27 million yuan from 829 people from Jan. 2004 to March 2005, a Nanjing Municipal Intermediate People's Court Ruling said on Tuesday.

All of his wealth was confiscated.

Xu promised to return 640 yuan in one year if his prospective clients invested 460 yuan in an ant farm he had started in 2002, a yearly return of 39.13 percent. The ants would be used for Chinese medicine products.

In Oct. 2004, he changed the return rate to 17.39 percent and then failed to pay back the money, the ruling said.

His accomplice, Xu Guanqing, general manager of the Nanjing Guancheng Company, was jailed for life and also had all his wealth confiscated. Ma Rumei, chief financial officer of the Beijing Guancheng Company, was jailed 15 years and fined 500,000 yuan.

The seized 1.68 million yuan, as well as 1.25 million Hong Kong dollars (160,095 U.S. dollars) and 393 calligraphies and paintings, was returned to the former owners. The illegal gains were asked to be returned to the victims.

(Xinhua News Agency June 18, 2008)