Chinese official executed for stealing, selling imperial relics

Chinese official executed for stealing, selling imperial relics

2010-11-19 20:49:49 GMT+7 (ICT)

BEIJING (BNO NEWS) -- China on Friday executed a local official, six years after being convicted for selling hundreds of Qing Dynasty imperial relics for about $550,000 state media reported.

Li Haitao was convicted in 2004 of stealing 259 relics between 1993 and 2002, and selling at least 152 while he was a security head a the Eight Outer Temples in the resort of Chengde in the northern province of Hebei.

Police have already seized 202 relics and are still hunting for 57 other items.

According to state-run Xinhua news agency, Li was executed after lost an appeal and China's Supreme Court approved the death penalty, the Intermediate People's Court of Chengde said.

Police suspicions were raised when a Chinese expert found two relics belonging to Beijing's Palace Museum at an auction in Hong Kong in 2002.

Four accomplices -- Wang Xiaoguang, Yan Feng, Zhang Huazhang and Chen Fengwei -- were sentenced to two and seven years in prison during the 2004 trial.

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