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A Chinese court sentenced a former official to death for taking more than $300 million in bribes over three decades.

Getting into it: First announced by the Changzhou Intermediate People’s Court in Jiangsu province on Monday, the ruling found that Yang Youlin had pocketed more than 2.2 billion yuan in cash and assets (roughly $324 million), one of the largest such hauls in recent years. The conviction also covered embezzlement, misappropriation of public funds, abuse of power, money laundering, and offering bribes of his own.

The court said the payments bought Yang’s help with “undertaking projects, business operations, land grants and working capital.” Yang, who’d climbed to executive deputy director overseeing the Nanjing Development Zone’s administrative committee, accepted bribes “in an especially huge amount, with especially serious circumstances and an especially egregious social impact.”

Yang pleaded guilty and “expressed remorse” in a final statement. The court ordered his assets confiscated and told authorities to claw back every yuan he’d taken. Notably, Yang had cooperated with authorities by providing assistance against other offenders, the kind of help that can earn leniency in China’s system. But the court said his crimes were so “grave” that the assistance “was insufficient to warrant a more lenient punishment.”

This all comes as Yang joins a short list of officials sentenced to death for corruption in recent years after an anticorruption campaign pushed by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In 2021, Lai Xiaomin, a state company party secretary, was executed for taking 1.8 billion yuan in bribes, and in 2024, Li Jianping, an Inner Mongolia official, was executed in a case involving more than 3 billion yuan. Many other cases end in prison terms or suspended death sentences that eventually soften into life terms.

Critics say the crackdown has doubled as a tool for Xi to purge political rivals.