A Vietnamese journalist who exposed transport ministry officials embezzling foreign aid to bet on European football matches, was jailed for two years on Wednesday.

Nguyen Viet Chien was convicted of "abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the state".

One of his informants, Lieutenant-Colonel Dinh Van Huynh, 50, was given a one-year sentence for "deliberately revealing state secrets".

Mr Nguyen told the court: "I never have any other purpose in mind when writing my reports but exposing wrongdoing."

Another journalist, Ngu­yen Van Hai, who admitted some errors, was given a two-year suspended sentence. The policeman who headed the corruption inquiry, General Pham Xuan Quac, now retired, was reprimanded for giving information to the press.

Vincent Brossel, Asia director for Reporters sans Frontières, said: "It was a political trial, it was a trial of the liberal media." .

The corruption case was deeply embarrassing for the government. In articles in 2006 for privately owned newspapers, Messrs Nguyen and Hai exposed a unit in the Ministry of Transport where officials embezzled funds meant for infrastructure development, mostly donated by the World Bank and Japan. Nine members of the unit have been convicted in connection with the case.

The government has made the fight against corruption a main aim, but Mr Brossel says Wednesday's verdicts call its efforts into question.