Bigger incentives offered for reporting corrupt officials
Increased cash rewards are being offered by Liaoning's Dalian city for information leading to the successful prosecution of corrupt officials.
The eastern port city's government has introduced a new law incorporating a sliding scale of up to 100,000 yuan (HK$94,000) for informants. The top reward is reserved for graft cases which involve more than one million yuan.
Those who report cases involving economic losses of less than one million yuan can receive up to 5 per cent of the total.
Wu Jiaoguan, the Dalian city discipline bureau official in charge of the scheme, said anyone was eligible for the reward.
'Any private citizen or government official can receive the reward if their information leads to a conviction,' he said. 'A person can report on all levels of officialdom, including those in the central government.'
The new reward policy is an update of the city's earlier corruption reporting system launched in 2000. Under the previous rules, informants could receive a maximum of 30,000 yuan.
Variations of the reward scheme exist in other regions around the nation.
According to Mr Wu, Dalian city's discipline and inspection bureaus receive about 5,000 corruption reports a year. However, when asked how many led to investigations, successful prosecutions or payment of rewards, he said he did not know.
Between 1998 to 2002, the People's Supreme Court reported that 83,308 officials had been convicted of graft, but only 2,662 were at or above county level. The latter figure represented a 65 per cent increase over the previous five-year period.
