Hundreds prosecuted in cadre crackdowns
14/3/2007 9:50
China's anti-graft campaign last year brought down hundreds of government
cadres - including nine high-ranking officials who were sent to prison, Chief
Justice Xiao Yang reported yesterday.
A total 825 convicted government
officials above the county level received court sentences in 2006, the president
of China's Supreme People's Court said in a work report to the annual session of
the National People's Congress in Beijing.
"Among the convicted, nine
were provincial- or ministerial-level officials, and 92 were at the prefecture
level," he said.
One of the year's most notorious cases involved Ding
Xinfa, the former prosecutor-general in Jiangxi Province, who was sentenced to
17 years for bribery and embezzlement.
The list of disgraced officials
also included Li Dachang, former vice governor of Sichuan Province, who was
sentenced to seven years in prison for abuse of power.
"The number of
convicted officials at provincial- or ministerial-level last year marked an
obvious rise from 2005, which shows China is indeed stepping up its anti-graft
efforts," said Lee Linseng, an NPC deputy from Hong Kong.
Chinese courts
heard 23,733 cases of embezzlement, bribery and dereliction of duty last year,
among which 8,310 were bribery cases involving government employees, according
to Xiao's report.
"China's courts will continue to seriously punish
crimes of corruption, dereliction of duty and commercial bribery," Xiao
said.
In a separate report delivered to the nearly 3,000 lawmakers in
attendance, top prosecutor Jia Chunwang said enhancing the crackdown on
job-related crimes was a key priority last year.
Prosecutors investigated
33,668 reports of alleged corruption, bribery and other job-related crimes in
2006, and charges were pursued against 29,966 suspects, Jia said.
He said 2,736 government employees above the county level were put under
investigation for job-related crimes last year, among whom 202 were at the
prefecture level and six were at the provincial or ministerial
level.
Corruption and commercial bribery have become a serious social
problem in China, arousing public anger, authorities acknowledged. Fighting
corruption and creating a clean government is considered an urgent issue
affected the "life and death" of the Communist Party of China, officials
said.
The Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection has
highlighted complaints of "government officials' collusion with business people"
in its battle against corruption.
Among them, Jia said the chief
prosecutor's office played a major role in the investigation of graft cases
involving State Food and Drug Administration officials. The investigation led to
the downfall of the drug watchdog's former chief, Zheng Xiaoyu.
Zheng,
who was from the Party and given an administrative penalty, was found to have
taken advantage of the administration's drug approval power to obtain bribes and
seek illegal profits for drug companies, disregarding his duty to supervise the
drug market.
Xinhua news
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