The number of commercial bribery cases dealt with by Chinese
courts rose to 4,406 in the first seven months, 8.2 percent more
than the same period of last year, the Supreme People's Court (SPC)
said on Saturday.
Xiong Xuanguo, vice president of the SPC, said 4,149 cases, or
94 percent of the total, involved civil servants, 6.3 percent more
year on year.
"China will continue to target government officials who take
advantage of their posts to collude with companies for illegal
profits," Xiong said.
Commercial briberies featuring corporate wrong-doings rose 37.3
percent and cases relating to individual employees of companies
jumped by 52.1 percent in the first seven months this year.
A total of 31,119 commercial bribery cases were dealt with in
China in the past two years before August 2007, with 7.079 billion
yuan (about US$943.8 million) involved, said Li Yufu, deputy
director of the leading group on anti-commercial bribery under the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.
The most notorious "big fish" caught in the anti-commercial
bribery fight was Wang Youjie, former deputy director of the
Standing Committee of Henan Provincial People's Congress, the local
parliament.
He was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for receiving
bribes worth 6.34 million yuan and possessing 8.9 million yuan
worth of property he was unable to account for.
Hu Xing, former deputy director of Yunnan Provincial Transport
Department, was given life imprisonment for abusing his authority
of city construction planning, real estate development and
expressway project approval to take more than 40 million yuan in
bribes.
Many other cases involved company bosses, bank directors and
hospital presidents.
Li Yufu, also vice-minister of supervision, said China will also
step up efforts in punishing bribers in accordance with the law
while showing no tolerance toward government officials taking
bribes.
He pledged that China will strengthen cooperation with other
countries to bust multinationals who are engaged in the rising
number of commercial briberies in China, as well as Chinese
nationals who fled abroad after they committed this crime.
(Xinhua News Agency September 29, 2007)