China court upholds mining tycoon\\\'s death sentence

A Chinese court on Thursday upheld the death sentence handed down to a mining billionaire said to have links with disgraced former security tsar Zhou Yongkang. Liu Han, his brother Liu Wei and three accomplices appealed to the high court in the central province of Hubei after they were condemned to death in May for ‘organising and leading a mafia-style group’, murder and other crimes. The court on Thursday rejected the appeal, it said in a posting on China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo. ‘The crimes of organising and leading a mafia-style group and murder Liu Han and Liu Wei committed were extremely serious and a punishment should be meted out to several offences combined,’ it said. Liu Han led private company Hanlong, which is based in the southwestern province of Sichuan and once launched a billion-dollar bid for an Australian firm. Sichuan is one of the power bases of Zhou, who once enjoyed vast power as China’s security chief but was announced last week to be under investigation for corruption, according to AFP.