(Yicai) May 15 -- A court in China has given the former chairman of Tsinghua Unigroup, once a high-profile semiconductor company, a two-year suspended death sentence for corruption.

Zhao Weiguo was found guilty of embezzlement, illegal profit-seeking for relatives and friends, and breach of trust by the Intermediate People’s Court of Jilin, which handed down the sentence. His crimes resulted in a total loss to state-owned assets of about CNY1.4 billion (USD194 million).

Zhao was granted the two-year reprieve because he surrendered himself, actively returned ill‑gotten gains, and showed remorse. If he serves out the period without further offense, his sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment. The court also ordered all of his personal property to be confiscated.

Tsinghua Unigroup, the chipmaker backed by China’s prestigious Tsinghua University, was once a key player in the country’s semiconductor industry. Zhao became the Beijing-based company’s chairman in 2013 and stepped down in 2022. During his tenure, he earned the nickname of “M&A Maniac” for aggressively pursuing acquisitions.

Tsinghua Unigroup bought more than 20 businesses, mostly other chipmakers, between 2013 and 2019, according to incomplete statistics, pushing the value of its assets to CNY297.8 billion (USD41.3 billion) from CNY1.3 billion and briefly putting it at the head of China’s chip firms.

Following this aggressive expansion, Tsinghua Unigroup defaulted on its debt in the second half of 2020. Its largest shareholder Tsinghua Holdings dispatched a task force to address the crisis, which subsequently declared the company insolvent in December 2021.

In July 2022, Tsinghua Unigroup completed a restructuring, with new shareholder Beijing Zhiguangxin Holding taking full ownership. As a result, Zhao resigned and was then placed under investigation by the National Supervisory Commission.

In March 2023, the NSC announced that Zhao was suspected of embezzlement, illegal profit-seeking, and breach of trust, causing harm to the interests of a listed company. The case was then transferred to prosecutors for review and indictment.

Editor: Futura Costaglione