Convicted financier loses appeal

Shanghai Higher People's Court rejected the appeal of an investment fund manager Tuesday who was sentenced to four years in prison and fined 18 million yuan ($2.96 million) last year for insider trading.

The court's decision was the final ruling in the high-profile case against 40-year-old fund manager Li Xuli, the former investment director of Bank of Communications Schroder Fund Management Co. He has no further chance to appeal.

Li was tried in June 2012 for using information he had obtained through his position to make investments for his own personal benefit in April 2009. The investments ended up earning Li more than 10 million yuan, which authorities later seized under the original sentence.

In court, Li's attorney argued that Li had been coerced into confessing that he asked a securities company manager in Shenzhen to illegally purchase stock on his behalf.

The confession was a prominent part of the case that led to Li's conviction in November 2012 in Shanghai No.1 Intermediate People's Court.

The court didn't buy Li's denial. "In the video, Li expressed himself naturally without any trace of coercion. The court believes the confession was genuine," Zou Bihua, vice president of Shanghai Higher People's Court, said in a statement.

The court also deemed that there was sufficient evidence to uphold the conviction. It determined the evidence showed that Li and his wife controlled the hidden bank accounts used to make the stock purchases, even though they were under other people's names. The account holders admitted that they left their bank documents to Li's wife so she could trade stocks.

The testimony of Li's wife helped convict Li in his original trial. However, prosecutors later withdrew the testimony for the appeal hearing in May because Li admitted that he had asked her to testify against him so she could avoid criminal charges. "The court dropped his wife's testimony because it was influenced by Li, which hurt its credibility," Zou said.

Zou said that most people convicted of trading stocks on inside information use other people's accounts to hide their transactions, so it can be difficult to connect the trades with the person who had inside information.