NANJING- The Higher People's Court of east China's Jiangsu Province on Thursday handed down a final verdict in which the court upheld a death sentence for Jiang Renjie, formerly deputy mayor of Suzhou City of the province.

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The higher court rejected Jiang's appeal over the first-instant-trial ruling made by a lower court, the Intermediate People's Court of Nanjing City, in April 2008 in which Jiang was found guilty of accepting bribes.

In accordance with the ruling made in April 2008, all of Jiang's personal assets were confiscated and he was also stripped of his political rights for life.

The Higher People's Court of Jiangsu heard that between the first half of 2001 to that of 2004, Jiang took the advantage of serving as deputy mayor of Suzhou City and being tasked with the responsibilities for urban construction, planning and real estate development to seek benefits on behalf of others, and in return he took bribes including 108.57 million yuan (about $16.6 million) and $4,000 in cash from property developers.

The higher court concluded that Jiang had committed bribe-taking crime for abusing his power to seek gains for others and accept bribes from them in return.

"The sum of bribes Jiang had taken in is huge and his case is very serious, thus he should be punished severely," said a spokesman of the higher court, who stressed that the verdict given by the lower court in the first-instant trial is appropriate, based on solid, adequate evidence and should be upheld.

The spokesman said the higher court had referred Jiang's death sentence to the Supreme People's Court for approval as stipulated by the law.