A former Taiwanese top financial official was sentenced Tuesday to a combined jail term of 10 years for his involvement in an insider trading scandal, a court official said.
Lee Ching-cheng, former head of the Examination Bureau under the cabinet-level Financial Supervisory Commission, received nine years for influence peddling and 16 months for leaking confidential information of a listed company, said a spokesman for the Taipei district court.
The court in April started hearing the controversial case in which a group of market players had allegedly conspired with some stock trading houses, financial officials and listed firms to make windfall profits from insider trading.
Lee was found guilty of leaking the audit reports of the listed Power Quotient International Co, a memory module maker, to the group whose members had made several million dollars of profits from the illegal deal.
Six others including bank executives, securities company officials and market players were also convicted but received suspended jail terms ranging from seven months to three years and 10 months.