Chinese police cracked 7,802 tax-related cases, arrested 6,993 suspects and retrieved economic losses valued at 36 billion yuan (about five billion U.S. dollars) in 2007, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) said on Wednesday.

Last year, public security departments joined with administrations of taxation to fight the increasingly rampant crimes of tax evasion and tax fraud in various regions and industries, the MPS said.

Police probed 3,511 cases involving issuing false or tax-offsetting invoices, arrested 2,979 suspects and retrieved 9.2 billion yuan last year, according to the ministry.

Since August 2006, public security departments have launched a series of special campaigns against spreading illegal information by texts or faxes on issuing or selling fake invoices.

During the investigations, the authorities cracked 2,963 cases of issuing or selling fake invoices, detained 1,917 suspects, confiscated 10,510,000 fake invoices and smashed 101 illegal invoice printing operations, it said.

Public security departments said they would intensify the crackdown on tax-related crimes this year and maintain the normal taxation order.

(Xinhua News Agency February 14, 2008)