Jakarta – Indonesia's High Court on Thursday upheld a 10-year-jail sentence for the governor of the nation's tsunami-ravaged Aceh province for skimming state funds – a key victory in the government's campaign against corruption, a media report said.

The verdict over an appeal from Governor Abdullah Puteh was decided in a closed doors session Wednesday by a special anti-graft panel of the High Court, the official Antara news agency reported.

Puteh, a veteran politician of Golkar Party, was convicted and sentenced in April by the newly created anti-graft court which found him guilty of siphoning off state money by padding the purchase price of a Russian-made Mi-2 helicopter for personal gain.

The Tuesday's ruling by the High Court came just one day after one of Puteh's lawyers was named a suspect by the country's powerful anti-graft commission for trying to bribe the high court's judges.

"In a session yesterday (Wednesday), the judge panel agreed to uphold the 10-year jail sentence," said As'adi Al Mar'uf, one of the five-judge panel of high court, as quoted by Antara.

Mar'uf said the panel had rejected all the appeals filed by Puteh and his lawyers. Therefore it also upheld the 500 million rupiah fine and ordered Puteh to repay the state IRD3.687 billion in losses, the Detik.Com online reported.

The April 11 verdict against Puteh was the first handed down by the new tribunal, which anti-corruption activists hope will be more effective than regular courts in prosecuting wealthy and influential suspects.

The case dates back to 2002, long before the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 127,000 people and destroyed hundreds of thousand of homes and public facilities in Aceh, a long-running separatist conflict.

Puteh was arrested a month after the election of last October election of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who promised to crack down on graft.

On Wednesday, the anti-graft commission, known as KPK, captured red-handed one of his lawyers, Tengku Syaefuddin Popon for trying to bribe an official at the High Court.

Corruption is endemic at all levels of Indonesian whose legal system is one of the most corrupt institutions, and in the past many well-connected defendants have been able to elude punishment.