The Fifth Intermediate People's Court of Chongqing sentenced Zhou Zhijian, a member of a gang which had gained huge profits from coercive trading and pork market monopoly, to death for murder.

The court also sentenced ringleader Zhou Zuyun death with a two-year reprieve after convicting him of racketeering, monopolizing the pork market, and organizing a price-fixing cartel with other gangs.

Another 16 gang members were given prison terms ranging from 16 months to 19 years.

The verdict said Zhou Zuyun and his gang reaped profits of over 119 million yuan ($18.8 million) from coercive trading, racketeering and illegally hiking the rents of the farm markets that they had monopolized since 2004.

Mr Zuyun's price-fixing cartel manipulated prices, sales and purchases, pushing up pork prices in Chongqing.

The gang disrupted the economic and social order by the use of force and threats, the verdict said.

Six butchers jailed over chemical-tainted pork

Six butchers in east China's Jiangsu Province have received jail terms ranging from three-and-a-half to four years over a chemical-tainted pork scandal reported in March, court authorities said Wednesday.

The six were convicted of harming public safety by producing and selling pork tainted with clenbuterol, a carcinogenic chemical added to pig feed to produce leaner pork, the provincial higher people's court said in a press release.

It said their jail terms were handed down by a local court in Nanjing on 13 December and the ruling went into effect as of Tuesday, as none of them had appealed within the given two weeks.

The court ruling also included fines ranging from 40,000 to 50,000 yuan (US$6,340 - US$7,925) each.

The six butchers, who worked at a Nanjing slaughter house, admitted they had bought live pigs from central Henan Province, slaughtered and sold the pork earlier this year, even though they knew the pork had been tainted by clenbuterol, the document said.