Graft investigators recover $300m

Guangdong corruption investigators had a busy start to the year, probing 540 cases involving 606 government and company officials in the first three months of 2001.

Guangzhou newspapers reported yesterday that 'serious' cases accounted for more than 70 per cent of the total dealt with by the Guangdong People's Procuratorate. This was a higher proportion than in previous years.

In investigating 64 bribery and corruption cases involving officials at county-level departments or higher, a 45.5 per cent increase over the same period last year, the procuratorate recovered state assets valued at 326 million yuan (HK$303 million).

The New Express News published the names of 21 officials caught in the procuratorate's net. The most senior was Yang Mingxiong, a former vice-director of the State Tax Bureau's Zhuhai branch, who was found guilty of accepting HK$1.71 million and another 830,000 yuan in cash and gifts.

Others caught include Gaoming Vice-Mayor Wei Shudi; Chen Yongkang, president of the Huadu branch of the Agricultural Bank of China; Wu Hongkang, a department head at the Gongbei Customs checkpoint on Zhuhai's border with Macau; and Yan Min, a vice-director of Guangzhou's Beijing Representative Office.

The Guangdong People's Procuratorate reported a steep rise in the number of cases involving the so-called 'three organs and one department' - party, administrative and judicial organs and economic management departments.