Three policemen in Shanghai's Zhabei and Baoshan districts have
been involved in organized crime, Shanghai People's Procuratorate
said yesterday.
Another two policemen are still being investigated.
The guilty three, one of them a deputy division chief in Zhabei
Department of Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau, used their
positions to protect illegal gambling dens, prosecutor Gao
Yongchang said.
"They received bribes from criminal organizations and with their
help the organizations expanded fast," he said.
The three have been convicted of bribery and dereliction of
duty.
The information was released by the procuratorate in a news
conference yesterday. No details were made available on the
penalties the three convicted officials received.
Zou Chuanji, a procuratorate spokesperson, said crimes in recent
years such as tax cheating, fraud and smuggling had seriously
disrupted the country's "normal socialist market mechanism".
"They are often related to government employees' corruption or
malpractice," he said. "The behavior encouraged crime and caused
huge losses to the country and people."
A scandal last September in which more than 3 billion yuan
(US$388 million) was siphoned from the city's social securities
fund for investment has led to the sacking and arrests of a dozen
senior officials including Shanghai former Party secretary Chen
Liangyu, the top head to have rolled in Shanghai for many
years.
In a massive campaign starting in August 2005, prosecutors'
offices around the country commenced a relentless crackdown on
dereliction of duty cases.
By the end of last December, Shanghai had racked up 27 such
cases, estimated to have cost the country 87 million yuan (US$11.2
million) in financial losses.
In August, 2006, a trading company registered in the city's
suburban Qingpu district was found to have faked VAT receipts and
caused more than 5.33 million yuan (US$685,330) in losses.
And an employee of the district taxation bureau who was
responsible for examining the company's tax books was sentenced two
years imprisonment with a two-year suspension for failing to
conduct his duty.
On May 10, 2004, an accident in a construction site in suburban
Songjiang district resulted in two deaths and one serious
injury.
Xu Qiang, an employee of the quality supervision center of the
district construction administration was sentenced to four years in
prison for failing to stop illegal construction, while also
receiving more than 60,000 yuan (US$7,758) in bribes.
(China Daily March 28, 2007)