A former manager of Yantong Commercial and Chemical Company in Beipiao in northeast China's Liaoning province has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for failing to take responsibility for a leak of sulfuric acid that caused a fatal accident, the Chinese newspaper Legal Daily reports.

Seven people were killed in the March 2013 explosion of a sulfuric acid tank on which the manager, Gou Weimin, had changed the thickness and height. The tank exploded as a worker was welding it, leaking 26,000 t of the acid.

The company's economic losses from the incident reached 12.1 million yuan ($1.95 million), according to reports.