Court to retry ex-official on housing deals

A case involving an ex-official convicted of bribery after paying only 70,000 yuan ($11,000) for two apartments worth more than 1 million yuan has been sent back to a lower court for retrial.

Xu Jiren, 60, a former official at a Beijing grain depot in the capital's Changping district, was originally sentenced in 2008 to 13 years in prison for bribery at the Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court, which ruled he used his position to buy the apartments for a much lower price.

The court said that Xu asked for two apartments from a construction company when it built houses for the depot's employees between February 1999 and November 2002.