BEIJING: A former senior Communist official and ally of ex-security chief Zhou Yongkang was sentenced to 12 years in prison for corruption yesterday, a court said. Li Chongxi, who headed a political advisory body in Sichuan province, one of Zhou’s powerbases, was convicted of accepting 11 million yuan (61.8 million baht) in bribes. Assets worth 1 million yuan were seized from him, the Nanchang People’s Intermediate Court said. Li is the latest in a long string of Zhou’s former allies to be jailed under President Xi Jinping’s sweeping anticorruption drive, which some have described as a political purge.