Reviewing the achievements in the anti-corruption struggle in 2001, the President of China's Supreme People's Court and the President of the Supreme People's procuratorate said that the law-enforcement organs exhibited more teeth in fighting corruption, contributing their due share to building a clean government.

According to their reports to the ongoing session of the National People's Congress (NPC), the people's procuratorates at all levels investigated 36,447 corruption cases involving 40,195 people and more than 4.1 billion yuan in money terms. The number of cases each involving one million yuan ran up to 1,319 and people involved numbered 9,452, including 2,670 officials at the county level and above and six officials at provincial and ministerial level such as Li Jiating, former governor of southwest China's Yunnan Province.

The people's courts at all levels convicted 20,120 criminals of taking bribes and embezzlement, including five provincial or ministerial level public servants, 89 prefecture level officials, and 419 county-level officials.

According to the reports, the main thrusts of law-enforcement were officials who accepted bribes and worked behind the scenes of organized crimes or provided them with "protective umbrellas", and public servants who shielded smuggling and the manufacturing and marketing fake goods.

Criminal responsibility was affixed on any person who committed crimes, irrespective of their positions, said President Xiao Yang of the Supreme People's Court.

At the same time, Xiao said, severer economic punishments were given to those committing crimes of corruption and people offering bribes were made to pay their prices.

The courts heard 493 bribery cases involving 539 people brought up by the people's procuratorates, and closed 478 cases involving 525 people.

The people's procuratorates at all levels investigated 279 cases of organized crimes, involving 345 officials last year. Bringing to book included those who accepted bribes and shielded and instigated criminal activities, those who leaked criminal cases under investigation and schemed for counter-investigation, those who provided protection of illegal activities by evil forces and those who themselves were principal members of underworld organizations.

The report of the Supreme People's Procuratorate revealed that 17,920 suspects of taking bribes and embezzlement were prosecuted. All coming from state-owned enterprises, they were charged with dividing up in private, appropriating or spiriting away state property during the course of converting into modern companies.

In addition, the people's procuratorates at all levels investigated 1,096 cases of bribing government functionaries.

The Supreme People's Court and the Ministry of Public Security joined hands in hunting out 3,046 criminals who had fled with money embezzled, recovering 680 million yuan.

The people's procuratorates also made marked progress in preventing career-related crimes, by helping set up 1,300 crime- prevention organizations, which proposed departments concerned and government departments to check on 28,500 cases.

Meanwhile, the Supreme People's Procuratorate and central departments joined hands in carrying out systematic crime prevention activities in financial, securities, state-owned enterprises, customs, building trade and medical organizations, helping them improve their rules and regulations, strengthen management and set up effective oversight and constraining mechanisms. Procuratorate organizations also carried out crime prevention in major construction projects in the areas of communications, energy and water conservancy, greatly reducing crimes and financial drains.

(Xinhua News Agency March 11, 2002)