A hospital accountant who conspired with a drug seller in southern China to embezzle millions of dollars from her employer has been sentenced to 15 years in prison, local media reported Tuesday.

The municipal people’s court of Nanning, a city in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, ruled Monday that the accountant, a woman in her 60s surnamed Li, had falsely reported the amount of money her hospital spent on pharmaceutical products for over a decade, embezzling nearly 30 million yuan ($4.5 million).

When the pharmaceutical company — which was not named but is reportedly based in Wuhan, Hubei province — received payment from the hospital, they kept the amount the hospital actually spent on drugs and gave the difference to the sales representative, a man surnamed Cai, which he then shared with his co-conspirator, Li.

Both Li and Cai were convicted of corruption, sentenced to 15 years and 13 and a half years in prison, respectively, and fined a total of 5 million yuan.

The day after the verdict, the State Council, China’s cabinet, issued guidelines for building “modern hospital management systems” that included rules about finance, staff training, and medical safety. Specifically, they recommend closer government supervision of hospitals’ financial activities, and that information from official audits be available to the public.

This is not the first time a Guangxi hospital employee has taken advantage of being in a position of authority. Earlier this month, Zhong Yuhua, the head of Beihai Municipal People’s Hospital, was dismissed from his post and expelled from the Communist Party for allegedly accepting bribes in exchange for favors.

Similar cases involving other hospital staff — including a pharmacist, a general administrator, and an equipment specialist — have been reported across China. In June alone, at least 54 heads of hospitals all over China, including 10 in Guangxi, were investigated under suspicion of taking bribes.

Foreign pharmaceutical companies, too, have found themselves at the center of Chinese medical scandals in recent years. In the summer of 2013, Baxter International, an Illinois-based manufacturer of drugs and medical equipment, determined that its joint venture in China was guilty of expense violations. And in May 2014, state newspaper Legal Daily accused British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline of evading over 100 million yuan in taxes.

Contributions: David Paulk; editors: Matthew Walsh and David Paulk.

(Header image: E+/VCG)