Chinese tycoon's sentence reduced to 25-year jail term

HANGZHOU, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Chinese tycoon Wu Ying, who was originally given the death penalty for illegal fundraising, had her sentence further reduced to a 25-year jail term at a trial Friday in east China's Zhejiang Province.

In 2007, the former chairwoman of Bense Trade Co. Ltd., then aged 26, was convicted of cheating investors out of 380 million yuan (61.1 million U.S. dollars) from May 2005 to January 2007 in private lending scams.

The court heard that she amassed her fortune by fabricating facts, deliberately hiding the truth, and promising high returns as an incentive.

In 2009, Zhejiang native Wu was initially sentenced to death. Her sentence was reduced to death with a two-year reprieve following a retrial in May 2012.

As the reprieve period was expiring, Wu, who is serving time in Zhejiang Provincial Women's Prison in the provincial capital Hangzhou, applied for the trial hoping for another reduction to her sentence.

According to the Criminal Law, a criminal serving a stay of execution can apply for a reduction in their penalty to life imprisonment, or even to a 25-year jail term if the person has no record of criminality in jail.

Her death sentence was then commuted to life imprisonment in July, 2014.

Her case had earlier sparked heated debate over the country's fundraising system, which outlaws all forms of private lending. Enditem