One of China's former top judges will be tried for pocketing nearly 600 thousand dollars in bribes, in one of the nation's most high-profile graft cases. Huang Songyou, former deputy head of the Supreme People's Court, will go on trial by the first week of March. The Chongqing Even News says this makes him the most senior judicial official to be tried since the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949.
Huang is accused of abusing power, enabling profit for others, taking bribes and living a "corrupt and lavish" life. He allegedly accepted a huge bribe to arrange a favourable ruling in a real estate case in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong in 2008 that benefited friends and cronies.