A total of eight senior government officials in Chongqing have now been linked to a corruption scandal in the municipality's property market.

Jiang Yong, former chief of Chongqing's municipal urban planning bureau, was the eighth person to be charged and will go on trial soon, Oriental Look magazine said yesterday.

Three officials were charged earlier in the bribery case, which now involves 19.91 million yuan ($2.92 million), according to the court's investigation.

Liang Xiaoqi, Jiang's deputy, reportedly accept bribes 88 times between 1999 and this year, amounting to 15.89 million yuan.

The bribery net expanded quickly when the average annual growth of real estate in Chongqing began to increase by 20 percent since 2004.

Real estate developers used various ways to build relations with governmental officials in charge of land management.

Liang introduced Jiang to the developers and he allegedly began to accept bribes from them in January 2005 through a network run by Huang Yun, who was the chief of Shapingba district in Chongqing.

The bribery net was exposed when a real estate developer complained in July last year that an official who had accepted money did not help him.

Three other officials in the case have accepted jail punishment, and another got the death sentence with a two-year probation.

All the officials are middle aged, and some have graduated from top universities, earlier Chongqing media reports said .

Jiang, 46, has a master's degree in urban planning from Wales University in Britain.

(China Daily October 15, 2008)