Last year's anti-graft drive led to the imprisonment of nine high-ranking
officials, Chief Justice Xiao Yang said yesterday.
Presenting a work report to the annual session of the 10th National People's
Congress (NPC), Xiao, who is president of the Supreme People's Court (SPC), said
a total of 825 government officials ranking above county level were sentenced in
2006.
"Of those convicted, nine held provincial or
ministerial-level positions, while 92 were at the prefecture level," Xiao said.
The nation's courts last year heard 23,733 cases of embezzlement, bribery and
dereliction of duty, of which 8,310 were bribery cases involving government
employees, said the report.
Xiao said that one of the key objectives for the courts in 2007 is to
continue to facilitate the country's anti-corruption drive.
"The courts will continue to seriously punish crimes of graft, dereliction of
duty and commercial bribery in accordance with the law," he said.
Both the government and the judiciary have given a high priority to the fight
against corruption involving officials, as such cases have stirred considerable
public resentment, he said
In a separate report delivered yesterday at the NPC session, top prosecutor
Jia Chunwang said a crackdown on job-related crimes was one of the key tasks
undertaken last year by the country's procuratorial bodies.
A total of 33,668 cases involving 40,041 people were investigated for
corruption, bribery and other job-related crimes. Of the people questioned,
29,966 were prosecuted, said Jia, who is procurator-general of the Supreme
People's Procuratorate (SPP).
In terms of status, 2,736 of the government employees investigated for
job-related crimes held positions above county level. Of those, 202 were at the
prefecture level and six were at provincial or ministerial level.
Jia said that the procuratorial departments had actively joined the country's
drive to curb commercial bribery.
A total of 9,582 commercial graft cases involving government employees were
investigated in 2006, involving more than 1.5 billion yuan ($193.6 million),
according to Jia.
"Many of these cases involved large numbers of people," Jia said. "By
investigating them and punishing those we found to be guilty, we succeeded in
landing a major blow in the fight against commercial bribery."
Jia said that one of the SPP's key successes last year was the graft case
brought against State Food and Drug Administration officials, which led to the
downfall of Zheng Xiaoyu, the former head of the drug watchdog.
Zheng, who was found to have taken bribes to allow companies to get around
drug approval standards, was expelled from the Communist Party of China and
given an administrative penalty.
The anti-corruption drive by the two judicial bodies has won approval from
NPC deputies.
"Reports show that both the SPC and the SPP have made significant progress in
cracking down on corruption and maintaining justice," said Zhao Long, a CPPCC
member.
(China Daily 03/14/2007 page6)
