HONG KONG (AFP) — Macau's highest court on Wednesday jailed disgraced former minister Ao Man-long for 28-and-a-half years, extending his sentence in the gaming haven's biggest-ever corruption probe.
The Court of Final Appeal also confiscated his assets and ordered Ao, the territory's former transport and public works minister, to give the government back 41 million patacas (5.1 million US dollars) he had obtained illegally, according to the court's written judgement.
Ao, 52, had already been sentenced to 27 years in prison in January last year on 57 graft charges including bribe-taking and money laundering.
The Cable TV network cited Judge Shum Ho-fai saying that had there been no restrictions on length of sentence, Ao's combined total of 81 convictions would have earned him a prison sentence of 368 years.
The judge described Ao as a greedy man who "saw the law as nothing", the broadcaster reported. Shum said Ao had damaged the credibility and reputation of the government in the southern Chinese territory.
In the two trials, Ao was found to have taken payments from contractors in return for approving either land sales or major construction projects in Macau.
The city, an hour from Hong Kong by ferry, has boomed in recent years on the back of the liberalisation of its gaming markets in 2002 and now takes in more gaming revenue than Las Vegas.
The case has cast a shadow on the former Portuguese colony, which has struggled to shake of its "Sin City" image, despite attracting huge chunks of foreign investment.
The foreign investors, from the US, Hong Kong and Australia, have seen the city of 550,000 sprout gleaming casinos and entertainment complexes in the last few years.
But Ao's conviction has damaged any clean-up efforts, as the case touched on some of construction work for the city's highest-profile resorts.
Construction on the Crown Macau casino hotel and the City of Dreams casino resort were both mentioned in the case, the South China Morning Post reported earlier.
Both casino projects are run by Melco Crown Entertainment, a joint venture between Lawrence Ho, son of Macau gaming tycoon Stanley Ho, and Australian entertainment tycoon James Packer.
Ao was first arrested in December 2006 by the Macau Commission Against Corruption, and convicted on 57 counts of corruption, money-laundering and bribe-taking last January.
Ao amassed a personal fortune of more than 100 million US dollars in his seven years in office -- 57 times his family's income during that time.
Some of the people implicated in Ao's case are still on the run.
Interpol put six of them on its wanted list in January this year, according to media reports. They include Chan Lin-ian, brother-in-law of the brother of Macau's chief executive Edmund Ho.
Chan's company, Shun Heng Construction, allegedly provided kickbacks to Ao over three public works projects it undertook between 2003 and 2006, reports said.
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