JINAN, CHINA—A Chinese court sentenced ousted senior politician Bo Xilai to life in prison on Sunday after finding him guilty of all the charges he faced of corruption, taking bribes and abuse of power in one of the country’s most lurid political scandals in decades.

The Jinan Intermediate People’s Court convicted the former Politburo member on charges of taking bribes, embezzlement and abuse of power. He was sentenced to life in prison on the bribery charges, 15 years for embezzlement and seven years for abuse of power.

Bo, with crew cut hair and wearing a white shirt, stood to hear the verdict.

The verdict followed a trial last month in Jinan in eastern China in which the Communist Party broke with precedent and allowed the court to release edited transcripts of Bo’s defence, in which he called his wife crazy and compared one witness to a mad dog. All Bo’s assets will be seized and he has the right to appeal, the court said.

The verdict completes the party’s purge of a one-time political star whose populist style broke with the leadership’s consensus-driven approach and roiled a once-in-a-decade leadership transition last year.

The threat Bo posed to the party order may have been the real reason for his ouster and trial, said Steven Tsang, director of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham in England.

Bo, the former Communist Party chief of the megacity Chongqing, vigorously denied any criminal wrongdoings, but the court said that it rejected his defence, according to transcripts of the judgment released by the court’s official microblog.

Bo’s downfall was set in motion by his wife’s murder of British businessman Neil Heywood in February 2012, followed by a defection of his top aide to a U.S. consulate with information about the murder case just ahead of a leadership transition.

RELATED:

Testimony has ‘soap opera’ ending

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Read more about: