Former Shanghai tycoon Zhou Zhengyi has been charged with bribery and forging VAT receipts, just months after completing a three-year prison sentence, local authorities said today.

Zhou, former president of Shanghai-based property firm Nongkai Development Group, was released from prison in May after completing a three-year sentence for fraud and manipulating the stock market.

But five months later, in October, Zhou was detained as prosecutors found new clues of crime and was arrested by the municipal procuratorate on Sunday.

A further investigation on Zhou's case is underway.

Zhou, 45, who started business as a teenager in a wonton noodleshop and graduated to number 11 on Forbes' list of 100 richest mainlanders, was the majority shareholder of the Hong Kong-listed Shanghai Land Holdings and Shanghai Merchants Holdings.

In 2002, Forbes estimated Zhou's wealth at about 320 million U.S. dollars.

Also known as Chau Ching-ngai, he was convicted and sentenced at the Shanghai No. One Intermediate People's Court in June 2004 for falsifying registered capital reports and share price manipulation.

Zhou was sentenced to two years and six months in prison for manipulating share prices and one year for falsifying registered capital reports. He was totally sentenced to three years in prison, according to the verdict of the Shanghai Number One Intermediate People's Court.

Nongkai Development Group was ordered to pay a total fine of 40 million yuan (5.12 million dollars), including 33 million yuan (some 4.23 million US dollars) for manipulating share prices and seven million yuan (some 0.89 million US dollars) for falsifying registered capital reports.

According to the verdict, from June 1999 to May 2003, Zhou Zhengyi was found manipulating stock prices through illegally buying and selling tradable shares of an engineering company in east China's Xuzhou city, owing 95.93 percent of the corporate shares at the peak time, which resulted in an unreasonable jump of402 percent of the stock's price.

From October 1998 to April 2000, Zhou was also accused of fabricating Nongkai's paid-up capital from the original 100 million yuan (approximately 13 million dollars) to 800 million yuan (some 102.5 million dollars) with falsified capital surplus.

In 2002, Nongkai group, having 4,000 employees, earned 540 million US dollars of sales and paid 12 million dollars in taxes.

Nongkai has four holding companies listed in Shanghai and Hong Kong, namely the Hainiao development Ltd., the Yingxiong holding company, the Shanghai Merchant holding company and the Shanghai Land holding company.

Over the past three years, Nongkai's three companies have sold their shares or stopped their trading in stock market. Zhou and his Nongkai only has 26 percent shares of Hainiao.

Mao Yuping, wife of Zhou Zhengyi, was sentenced to 32 months in prison last April by the Hong Kong District Court on charges of conspiracy of defrauding letters of credits worth 49 million HK dollars (6.3 million U.S. dollars).

Mao, 43, was charged by the Independent Commission Against Corruption for 12 counts of conspiracy to defraud letters of credits worth more than 49 million HK dollars based on bogus business transactions.

Persons involved in Zhou's case also include Tang Haigen, brother of Zhou's sister-in-law. Tang, former president of Hainiao, played an important role in Zhou's business development.

Tang, also former member of the Shanghai municipal committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, was removed from the political advisory body last October after criminal investigations were launched against him.

Tang, 49, has been arrested on charges of embezzlement and bribery.