Jia Changbin, chairman of the State-owned China Aviation Oil (CAO), China's biggest jet-fuel trader, has been sacked, Xinhua News Agency reported on Wednesday.

Jia was involved in a trading scandal that caused large-scale economic losses three years ago,

The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission ordered Jia to resign on Tuesday, Xinhua reported.

Jia was replaced by Sun Li, chief executive of PetroChina Chemical & Sales Co, a unit of the listed PetroChina.

Also, Chen Jiulin, the former head of China Aviation Oil (Singapore) Corp, who was at the center of a scandal that almost drove the company to the brink of bankruptcy, has lost his Communist Party membership and has been relieved from his post.

A Singapore court sentenced Chen to more than four years in prison and a fine of S$335,000 ($219,000) last March. He is still in a Singapore prison.

Chen pleaded guilty to six charges, including insider trading, failing to disclose a $550 million trading loss and deceiving adviser Deutsche Bank AG.

That same month, three other CAO executives, including Jia, were fined for helping conceal huge losses of State assets.

Following the losses, the Singapore-listed CAO attracted new investors through a major restructuring.

The company's creditors agreed to a bailout plan in June 2005 that saw oil giant BP Plc and Singapore's State investment firm, Temasek, inject $130 million into the company.

BP and Temasek hold 20 percent and 4.65 percent of CAO respectively.

CAO reported total assets of 19.7 billion yuan ($2.5 billion) and sales income of 53.6 billion yuan ($6.9 billion) at the end of last year.

China Daily

(China Daily 02/08/2007 page3)