The leader of a notorious triad who had controlled three leading seafood markets in Shenzhen for three years was executed Wednesday, according to a Daily Sunshine report.

Chen Kegeng became Guangdong's first mafia member to be given the capital punishment, the report said.

The Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court in November 2003 sentenced Chen to death after finding him guilty of orchestrating the murder of a seafood wholesaler as well as attacks on other wholesalers.

He was also convicted of blackmailing seafood traders and running an organized criminal gang.

His lieutenant, Huang Yantian, was given a death sentence with a two-year reprieve.

The court also handed out jail terms ranging from four to 20 years to seven other accomplices.

Chen and more than 10 of his accomplices stabbed to death a Buji retailer surnamed Zhang on July 26, 1999, after Zhang refused to pay the gang protection money, the court said.

The gang extorted huge amounts of protection money from the Dongmen, Buji and Luofang markets between 1999 and 2001.

Wholesalers who refused to pay were attacked or forced to leave. In an 84-page judgment, the court ordered four of the convicts to pay more than 140,000 yuan (US$17,262) in damages to Sun Lixian, a former seafood retailer.

Sun, whose relentless efforts reportedly led to the prosecution of the gang, had sued the gang with a claim for 1.78 million yuan in medical costs and compensation for mental suffering.

The 59-year-old Shandong businessman was stabbed 14 times only two weeks after he started a seafood business in Shenzhen in March 2001.

He had refused to pay protection money to the "seafood bandits."

After the attacks, Sun quit his business and began an odyssey that finally caught the attention of the Ministry of Public Security, which then ordered Shenzhen police to give priority to the case.

Editor: Yan