BEIJING -- Sun Luwei, former head of Beijing Products Quality Supervision and Inspection Institute, was sentenced by a local court on Friday to 46 months in prison for taking bribes.

The People's Court of Shunyi District in Beijing heard that Sun became head of the institute in 2005. In 2009, when the institute was about to acquire some testing equipment, he allegedly disclosed privileged information to Wang, the businessman who won the contract the next year.

In January 2013, Sun was found to have asked for 500,000 yuan ($about 74,000) from Wang to buy an apartment. He was also convicted for taking two sums of money totalling 8,000 yuan from Wang as gifts.

The court sentenced Sun to three years and ten months and fined him 200,000 yuan.

More than 300 people, including reporters and ordinary residents, attended the trial.