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NPC & CPPCC Sessions 2006

 GD Provincial People's Congress & CPPCC annual Sessions

Xiao Yang, president of the Supreme People's Court, delivers his work report to the annual session of Tenth National People's Congress in Beijing, March 11, 2006. (Xinhua photo)

In the fight against corruption and other job-related crimes, Chinese local courts convicted six provincial and ministerial officials to prison in 2005, the same as in the previous year, but meted out criminal penalty to much more lower level officials, Chief Justice Xiao Yang said Saturday.

Courts across the country heard 24,277 cases of embezzlement, bribery and dereliction of duty in 2005, and sentenced 1,932 officials above the county level to prison, said Xiao, president of the Supreme People's Court, in his report to the annual session of the Tenth National People's Congress.

"Of the convicted, six were provincial or ministerial officials, 178 were prefecture level officials," he said.

The most notorious convicted provincial or ministerial level officials were Tian Fengshan, former minister of land and resources who were sentenced to life imprisonment, and Han Guizhi, former chairman of Heilongjiang Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference who was given death penalty with a two-year reprieve.

Observers said while the number of convicted provincial level officials in 2005 remained the same as in 2004, the number of guilty county level official rose from 458 to 1,748 and prefecture level official from 73 to 178.

In a separate report to the Parliament, top prosecutor Jia Chunwang said procuratorial bodies across China have focused the investigation of job-related crimes on high-level officials, "profitable" government sections, monopoly industries and state-owned companies in an effort to weed out corruption.

"Job-related crimes have been rampant in some industries and government sections over the past years, but the amount of money has risen, crimes are committed more cunningly and more officials are absconding with large sums of public fund," said Jia, procurator-general of the Supreme People's Procuratorate.

Chinese prosecutors investigated 2,799 government officials above the county level, including 196 at prefecture level and eight at provincial and ministerial level in 2005. In addition, 9,117 executives of state-owned companies were probed for misappropriating or embezzling company assets.

In 2005, 703 government officials at large suspected of job-related crimes were seized, 14.5 percent more than the previous year, with 7.4 billion yuan of illicit money confiscated, 62.9 percent more than 2004, statistics show.

A total of 41,449 government employees were probed by prosecutors in 2005 for corruption and dereliction of duty, of whom 30,205 were brought to court, statistics show.

Editor: Yan