19 January 2012 :

Zhejiang's Higher People's Court upheld the death sentence handed down to Wu Ying, a 30-year-old businesswoman, who was sentenced to death by an intermediate court in December 2009 on charges of fund-raising fraud. Arrested in February 2007, Ms. Wu was held for two years before she faced charges of embezzling nearly 390 million yuan from 11 people in what the China Daily described as "one of the country's biggest financial frauds committed by a woman." Initially, Wu had been charged with illegal fundraising, which carried a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and would've been heard at a district-level court. But as investigations proceeded, the charges were altered so that when the case came to trial, Ms. Wu was accused of fund-raising fraud. Despite Wu's denials that she had cheated anyone and that all the money she had borrowed had been invested rather than used for personal use, on 18 Dec 2009, the Jinhua City Intermediate People's Court found her guilty, sentenced her to death, stripped her of her political rights for life and confiscated all her possessions.