Chen Liangyu, the dismissed former Shanghai Party chief, went on trial in Tianjin yesterday, Xinhua News Agency reported. The Tianjin No.2 Intermediate People's Court heard the case.

Police cars full of officers blocked the streets nearby, the agency said.

Amid concerns Chen might feel unwell during the hearing, a medical team was placed on standby, a well-informed source was quoted by the report as saying.

The court also heard the case of Zhang Guoguang, the former vice-governor of central China's Hubei Province, in December 2004. Zhang was given an 11-year jail term for taking bribes.

Chen, the former Party secretary of Communist Party of China's Shanghai Committee and once a member of the Party's Politic Bureau, was apprehended by the Party's central discipline inspectors for investigation in September 2006. He was then expelled from the Communist Party of China and dismissed from his government posts.

Earlier media reports said Chen was involved in Shanghai's biggest financial scandal involving the misappropriation of 3.7 billion yuan ($530 million) from the pension fund.

Twenty-five senior government and corporate executives have been or will be tried in courts in Shanghai, Jilin Province and Anhui Province because of their involvement in the scandal.

(Shanghai Daily March 27, 2008)