China's top procurator said Monday the number of official crime cases is still large, and called on the country to continue its crackdown on crimes like corruption and dereliction of duty.
In the first 11 months of this year, about 38,025 cases of official crime were filed for investigation and prosecution by the country's procuratorial organs, involving 41,797 suspects.
Of the total, 16,472 were serious embezzlement and bribery-taking cases, accounting for 53.4 percent of the total, up 4.8 percent from the same period of last year.
About 2,603 officials at county and similar level or above have been punished during this period.
Jia Chunwang, procurator-general of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, released the statistics during a nationwide meeting of procurators of the provincial-level people's procuratorates.
"Currently, the breeding ground for corruption still exists in the country, and the official crime rate is still high. This requires the country's procuratorial departments to put cracking down on official crimes on the top of their work agenda," Jia said.
"In future, major investigation efforts should be put on the corruption cases committed by officials at county and similar level or above; state assets embezzlement cases; power abuse cases and cases causing losses of life and property," he stressed.
Jia urged all levels of procurators to pay more attention to official crimes related to areas like finance, real estate, construction project bidding, land-use right acquisition and materials purchasing, which are all prone to crime.
"While stepping up efforts to investigate significant cases, procuratorates at all levels should also pay attention to dealing with grass-roots corruption cases, because they are closely related to the people's fundamental interests," said Jia.
During the first 11 months of this year, China's procuratorates at all levels approved the arrest of a total of 682,158 alleged criminals, 41,797 of whom were accused of official crimes.
(Xinhua News Agency December 23, 2003)
