BEIJING, CHINA - A CHINESE court on Sunday rejected an appeal against a 19-year jail term handed down to a tycoon embroiled in a huge Shanghai social security fund scandal, a financial magazine said in its online edition.

Once one of the country's richest men, Zhang Rongkun was convicted in April of crimes including bribery, manipulating the stock market and fraudulently issuing bonds, the report in the influential Caijing magazine said.

Jilin provincial Supreme People's Court rejected the appeal and stood by the original sentence, the magazine said, adding that Mr Zhang would appeal again to a higher court.

The former garment salesman, who ranked 16th on the Forbes China Rich List in 2005, was accused of bribing a former director of the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Social Security, to secure a 3.2 billion yuan ($634 million) loan from a city fund.

His downfall was part of a wider pension fund scandal, which emerged in 2006, involved the misappropriation of at least 33 billion yuan, and has toppled dozens of the city's government officials and executives.

Among them was Chen Liangyu, the former Communist Party chief of China's financial hub and the most senior official to be jailed for graft for a decade since former Beijing Party boss Chen Xitong was sacked in 1995. -- REUTERS