Yu Bing, former head of the Internet monitoring department of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve on Friday at a Beijing court for corruption, taking bribes, and twisting the law to suit his own purposes.

Yu was accused of accepting bribes totaling more than 14 million yuan (just over 2 million US dollars) during his reign at the department. The most notorious amount was the 4.2 million yuan he took from a top Chinese anti-virus company, Rising Software, for which he manufactured criminal evidence to frame its competitor.

Yu took bribes from Rising Software and ordered his staff to create fake evidence to set up Tian Yakui, vice president of Micropoint Technology in 2005, the Beijing Municipal People's Procuratorate discovered.

Tian was taken into custody on charges of infringing commercial secrets and then was held in a detention house for 11 months.

Two deputies of Yu, Zhang Pengyun and Qi Kun, confessed that Yu instructed them to push several companies to make false allegations that Micropoint had planted a virus in their computer systems. Yu had also threatened to demote the two if they did not obey his orders.

Zhang and Qi were sentenced to three years in prison with three years probation.

The boss of Micropoint, Liu Xu, who was the former general manager of Rising, secretly transferred his research department from Beijing to Fuzhou in 2006 for staff safety.

In 2007, Micropoint filed a lawsuit against Yu, who had already fled to South Africa.

In 2008, Yu came back to China to be investigated, with efforts made by the Supreme People's Procuratorate. Yu then went on trial in September of 2009.

Tian was released in 2007 without charges.

Yu was said to be fond of collecting paintings and artifacts, which he then hinted to companies asking for his favor to buy at high prices.

Micropoint Technology said on Friday it would launch a lawsuit seeking compensation for its losses incurred during its defamation, the Beijing Evening News reported.