GSK China crisis: Peter Humphrey will not appeal two-and-a-half year sentence

Mr Humphrey, 58, was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison, a fine of £20,000 and subsequent deportation from China. Ms Yu, 60, was sentenced to two years in prison and a £15,000 fine.

However Mr Humphrey's defending lawyer Zhai Jian has said the couple do not want to appeal their respective sentences.

Mr Humphrey and his wife, who ran their own investigation firm, were arrested shortly after completing an internal probe for GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in China.

The drug maker is itself the target of a separate corruption probe into allegations it paid as much as £320m in bribes to doctors and officials to win sales.

^{Harvey Humphrey (C), son of British investigator Peter Humphrey, waits to enter the Shanghai No.1 Intermediate People's Court ahead of his father trial in Shanghai (Reuters)}

The prosecution avoided questions on the couple’s GSK investigation, which centred on a former employee, Vivian Shi, a well-connected daughter of a senior Communist party official,

GSK suspected Ms Shi of orchestrating a smear campaign against Mr Reilly, which included the sex tape and the series of whistleblower emails that led to China’s major bribery investigation into the company.

While GSK was not mentioned in the trial, Mr Humphrey has blamed the drug maker for his plight, saying it concealed the full extent of the bribery allegations it was facing when it hired ChinaWhys to carry out the investigation into the sex tape.

^{Court officials attending the trial of a British investigator once hired by scandal-hit pharmaceutical giant GSK in China and his wife at the Number One People's Intermediate Court in Shanghai}

more