Li Jianzhong, one of China's top rocket designers, will stand trial before long for taking large amounts of filthy money.

    BEIJING, April 14 (Xinhuanet) --  Li Jianzhong, one of China's top rocket designers, will stand trial before long for taking large amounts of filthy money, reported Tuesday's Huaxia Times, a Beijing based press.

    Li was the eighth president, for six years from 1994 to 2000, of the prestigious China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), the country's leading launch vehicle producer, and renowned as the development organizer for the Long March series of rockets, which have sent various satellites and the Shenzhou V aircraft, China's first manned spaceship into space.

    "The bribery taken by Li and his complices has well exceeded 2 million yuan (about 242,000 US dollars), an amount reported by the media," said a vice president of CALT, who the paper said declined to be named.

    Earlier reports indicated that the central government had heard words from informants shortly after the successful blast-off of Shenzhou V in October 2003, and a probe was started then against him.

    Li had collected the bribery when he served as the president ofCALT and chairman of a listed company specialized in rocket technologies, said informants.

    "Disciplinary authority and prosecutors had confirmed in the main the fact that Li had perpetrated bribery-related crimes and he was then under house arrest," reported the Yangcheng Evening News Monday.

    "The bribery taking was totally a personal matter," acknowledged the vice president, "Both the spending for and quality of the scientific development of the projects then were not negatively affected."

    He said none of all the others involved in Li's case were technicians or members of the development team of Long March 2F, launch vehicle of Shenzhou V.

    "So the allegations are groundless that the quality of ShenzhouV had been somewhat affected," he was quoted as saying by the Huaxia Times.

    In March of 1996, Li organized the acquisition of a listed company and rebuilt it into the Long March Launch Vehicle Technology Co., Ltd, with CALT as the biggest shareholder. The newcompany was listed as candidate for China's top fifty listed companies in 2001.

    "He had betrayed some symptoms of crime at that time," recalledthe vice president, noting that Li had been held for investigation four years earlier.

    He described Li, who was not trained as rocket designer when inschools, as not so knowledgeable in rocket related issues but expert at capital operation.

    Other leaders of CALT had reminded Li to be careful, clean and aboveboard, the vice president said, but Li simply pledged that he would never run into trouble.

    "But Li's case will not erode the courageous, collective spiritof the Shenzhou VI team," he said.

    Xinhua has called the information office of CALT, but the latter only replied by saying that they did not know anything about the case.

    An official with the disciplinary sector of the China Aerospace and Technology Corporation, which CALT is subordinate to, said they already knew the case but declined to comment.

    Founded in 1957, CALT has sent more than 70 spacecraft into thegiven orbits in the past 35 years since 1970. It now boasts more than 8,000 elite technicians with some 10 billion yuan (approximately 1.2 billion US dollars) of assets. Enditem