A corruption trial over fake Chinese wedding trips in France ended Thursday with a 30-month jail sentence for a former French official, reports Yahoo! News.
Lise Han, originally from Taiwan, was sentenced after being found guilty of fraud and mishandling public funds by a court in the central city of Tours.
The court heard earlier that while she was working at City Hall on tourism issues, she was also running a private company organising the so-called wedding trips between 2007 and 2011.
The trips did not include a real ceremony but Chinese couples travelled long distances and paid large sums for what were billed as "romantic wedding" packages and were photographed in wedding attire in stunning locations, including the Tours City Hall.
Although Han had officially resigned from her job as head of the organising group, Time/Lotus Bleu, she was accused of continuing to run the firm while at City Hall, which was in turn subcontracting the work to her firm, netting hundreds of thousands of euros.
The sentencing came after another accused in the case, a former mayor of Tours, committed suicide.
Jean Germain, a close ally of President François Hollande, was found dead in the garage next to his house just moments before the trial was due to begin in April 2015, having shot himself with a hunting rifle.