A former official with the Chinese Food and Drug Administration has been jailed for taking bribes from vaccine manufacturers who wanted help with gaining approval for their drugs, the state-owned Legal Evening News reported on Tuesday.
Former deputy director of the regulator’s drug testing center Yin Hongzhang (尹紅章) was sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined 500,000 yuan (US$71,890), the newspaper said.
His wife and son earlier received prison sentences for their involvement.
The newspaper said Yin and his family accepted 3.56 million yuan in bribes from 2002 to 2015, as well as gifts including ivory products, to help companies in Shanghai, Beijing and other Chinese provinces gain or speed up approvals for vaccines used against SARS and bird flu among others.
In one case, he helped a company smooth the drug approval process because he wanted help with buying and renovating a house. In another, he helped a firm shave at least three years off an approval process by allowing it to jump a queue.
Yin was arrested in April 2015, the newspaper said.
Yin was not able to be reached for comment.
Yin’s sentencing comes as the Chinese government has pledged greater scrutiny of vaccines after a scandal broke last year involving about US$90 million worth of illegal vaccines that were suspected of being sold in dozens of provinces.
In March last year, a mother and daughter in Shandong Province were found to have illegally bought vaccines from traders and sold on to hundreds of resellers around China.
Since coming to power in late 2012, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has waged a campaign against corruption.
Dozens of senior Chinese Communist Party members have been jailed, including former Chinese domestic security head Zhou Yongkang (周永康), who was given a life sentence for corruption in 2015.
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