Forty five people, including several officials, have been sentenced in China for their negligence and involvement in a landslide triggered by a giant waste dump which killed 73 people in southeastern Shenzhen city in 2015.
The accused, mostly from Hong Ao landfill, were tried in Intermediate People's Court of Shenzhen, the People's Court of Nanshan district and the People's Court of Baoan district from April 26 to 28 and the verdict was delivered yesterday.
Long Renfu, boss of Shenzhen Yixianglong company which managed the dump site, was sentenced to 20 years in prison and fined 10 million yuan (about USD 1.5 million) for bribery and negligence which led to the accident.
The dump site had a planned storage of four million cubic meters and a maximum stack height of 95 meters, but when the accident happened, its actual storage reached had 5.83 million cubic meters and the waste heaps stood as high as 160 meters.
Meng Jinghang, former head of the city administration bureau of Shenzhen, was convicted of abuse of power and taking a bribe of 24.9 million yuan.
He was sentenced to 20 years in prison and fined eight million yuan, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
Peng Shuiqing, former head of the Guangming New District management bureau of the Urban Planning, Land and Resources Commission of Shenzhen, was sentenced to 16 years and fined one million yuan for the same offences.
Another 17 government officials were sentenced to three to seven years in jail for negligence and abuse of power.
Another 25 also received penalties.
The landslide occurred when a huge waste pile collapsed.
The December 2015 accident which killed 73 people and and left four others missing had resulted in a direct economic loss of 880 million yuan, and was believed to be caused by mismanagement rather than any geological reasons, the report said.
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