Matthew Ng The verdicts have also shocked Mr Ng’s legal team, business supporters and Australian officials and raised yet more concerns that China’s commercial and legal environments are deteriorating for Chinese citizens and also foreign citizens of Chinese ethnicity. "We are the sacrificial objects of this case," Mr Ng and Mr Zheng both told Judge He Chunzhu, after being asked if they had any comments. Mr Ng, Mr Zheng and Ms Yang all said they would immediately appeal the verdicts against them. Ms He is also presiding over a similar case involving a successful Australian business person, Charlotte Chou. Ms Chou's case involves similarly murky allegations that the Guangzhou judicial system and a Guangzhou vice-mayor have received huge bribes to keep her in jail, while her business partner takes control of the profitable private university she established.

Her case has also been adjourned,in the same Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court. Mr Ng was chief executive of a successful London-listed travel company called Et-China. He was detained in November last year after he and other shareholders had contracting to sell the company to a Swiss firm for about US$100 million. Mr Ng’s lead lawyer, Chen Youxi, had told the court that the criminal case had been orchestrated by a third party as leverage in its attempt to obtain the profitable Guangzhou business on the cheap. Mr Ng and other witnesses say they were offered release in exchange for Et-China’s s local joint venture partner Guangzhou Lingnan taking control of the local Guangzhou travel business at a discount price, but Mr Ng refused the offer. It's particularly shocking because we were not even informed that there would be a verdict beforehand

Guangzhou Lingnan is the largest company owned by the Guangzhou municipal government. The prosecution provided little substantial evidence to contradict this proposition during earlier proceedings. Speaking from Guangzhou yesterday Mr Ng’s wife, Ms Chow, said she had been shocked when the judge started reading an hour-long verdict without warning, moments after calling for a recess in proceedings. Ms Chow’s husband, his lawyers and the Australian officials in the Guangzhou court room were also blind-sided by the fact of the decision and astonished by its severity, she said.

The verdict was handed down without notice in the absence of Mr Ng’s star lead lawyer Chen Youxi. The Australian Consul General and Australian journalists were also absent,as authorities had told lawyers and the Australian Government that yesterday’s hearing were merely procedural. "It’s particularly shocking because we were not even informed that there would be a verdict before hand," said Mr Ng’s lawyer in court yesterday, Chen Yong. "I don’t want to comment on the Chinese judicial system."

Mr Ng was sentenced to 2 years jail for misappropriation of company funds, 2.5 years for false registration of company capital, two years for work unit bribery and eight years for embezzlement, according to Mr Chen. Mr Ng's cumulative 14.5 year sentence was commuted to 13 years. "It is very unfair, I don’t’ think there is any human rights here," said Ms Chow. “His defence case was not considered by the judge,” she said. “She read everything from the prosecution case." Prior to Mr Ng's detention the company's chairman, Zheng Hong, had been previously detained under the Communist Party’s secretive and extra-judicial interrogation and isolation procedure known as shuanggui.

The company chief financial officer, Kitty Yang, was also detained under shuanggui. Ms Yang was sentenced to 4.5 years jail, commuted to 3.5. Mr Zheng, whose daughter is an Australian citizen, was sentenced to 17 years jail, commuted to 16. "Zheng Hong's wife said he may has well have been given the death sentence," said Mr Ng’s wife, Ms Chow. Ms Chow said she now had to face the magnitude of how and where to rear their three young children.

Their son is currently in New Zealand, being cared for by Mr Ng’s sister, while their two young daughters remain with her in Guangzhou. "I need to talk through this problem first, its too big a burden for me," she said. "I’m having financial difficulties, I've had no income for more than a year now, I have a high mortgage and I need to support my children." Mr Ng also has another child by an earlier marriage living in Guangzhou. The Australian Government has raised procedural concerns about the case at high levels including to the Party Secretary of Guangdong province, Wang Yang.

The case has sat awkwardly with Mr Wang’s cautious moves to position himself as a progressive and liberal-minded leader as he manoeuvres for a seat on the elite Politburo Standing Committee late next year. Loading Mr Wang provided reassurances to Treasurer Wayne Swan in a recent visit to Guangzhou. Observers close to the case also speculate about whether it demonstrates a growing loss of central authority over local governments and other official agencies.