China's high-profile anti-graft campaign brought down a series
of high ranking officials in 2006, among whom nine were sentenced
by courts, Chief Justice Xiao Yang said Tuesday.
A total of 825 convicted government officials above the county
level were sentenced by courts in 2006, Xiao, president of China's
Supreme People's Court (SPC), said in a work report to the annual
session of the National People's Congress (NPC), the country's
parliament.
"Of the convicted, nine were provincial- or ministerial-level
officials and 92 were at the prefecture level," he said.
One of the most notorious convicted officials was Ding Xinfa, a
former provincial procurator-general of eastern Jiangxi Province, who was sentenced to 17
years for bribery and embezzlement.
The disgraced list also included Li Dachang, former vice
governor of southwest Sichuan Province, who was sentenced to seven-
years in prison for power abuse.
"The number of convicted officials at provincial- or
ministerial-level last year marked an obvious rise compared with
that in 2005, which shows that China is indeed stepping up its
anti-graft efforts," Lee Linseng, an NPC deputy from Hong Kong,
told Xinhua.
Chinese courts heard 23,733 cases of embezzlement, bribery and
dereliction of duty in 2006, among which 8,310 were bribery cases
involving government employees, according to Xiao's report.
Xiao said it is an important task of the courts to boost the
country's anti-graft drive. "China's courts will continue to
seriously punish crimes of corruption, dereliction of duty and
commercial bribery according to law," he said.
In a separate report delivered to nearly 3,000 lawmakers, top
prosecutor Jia Chunwang said enhancing crackdown on
job-related crimes was one of the priorities of the country's
procuratorial bodies in 2006.
The procuratorial organs placed 33,668 cases on file for
investigation for corruption, bribery and other job-related crimes
in 2006, involving 40,041 people, and among them, 29,966 were
prosecuted, said Jia, procurator-general of the Supreme People's
Procuratorate (SPP).
He said 2,736 government employees above the county level were
put under procuratorial investigations for job-related crimes last
year, among whom 202 were at the prefecture level and six were at
the provincial- and ministerial-level.
Corruption and commercial bribery have become a prominent social
problem in China, arousing public anger. Fighting against
corruption and building a clean government is seen as an urgent
issue concerning the "life and death" of the Communist Party of
China (CPC).
The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the CPC has
highlighted "government officials' collusion with business people"
in its battle against corruption.
Jia said the procuratorial departments have actively joined in
the country's drive in curbing commercial bribery.
He said the SPP played a major role in the investigation into
the graft cases of some State Food and Drug Administration
officials in 2006. The investigation led to the downfall of the
drug watchdog's former head Zheng Xiaoyu.
Zheng, who has been expelled from the CPC and given
administrative penalty, was found taking advantage of the
administration's drug approval power to obtain bribes and seek
illegal profits for some drug companies, disregarding his duty to
supervise the drug market.
"The investigation and punishment to the key commercial bribery
cases, which involved broad regions, large numbers of people and an
enormous sum of money, has greatly stricken such violations and
greatly curbed the tendency of commercial bribery," Jia said.
A total of 9,582 commercial bribery cases involving government
employees were investigated in 2006, involving more than 1.5
billion yuan (US$193,626), according to Jia's report.
"The anti-graft storm sends a very clear message that China is
not going to relax its combat against official corruption," Fu
Yongli, an NPC deputy from southwest China's Sichuan Province told
Xinhua.
China's Judicial Work in 2006
China's Procuratorial Work in 2006
(Xinhua News Agency March 13, 2007)
