More than two-thirds of Shanghai's corruption cases in the past five years involved state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and local justice officials have vowed to get tough on crime as rapid development continues. Chief prosecutor Wu Guangyu said state firms were entangled in corruption cases involving more than two billion yuan (HK$1.88 billion), the official Shanghai Daily reported yesterday. It gave no figures for total cases. Shanghai has a reputation for being 'cleaner' than other mainland cities. Unlike Beijing, Shenyang or Xiamen, the mainland's commercial capital has yet to report a major corruption case involving local officials. Mr Wu told the annual session of the Shanghai People's Congress that prosecutors handled 54,346 graft cases involving 80,607 people in the past five years. Of these, 51,100 cases - involving 74,512 people - reached the courts during that period. Some 74,679 people were detained on suspicion of all crimes with 69,061 formally arrested. Among the major cases, the manager of a real estate company in the city's Minhang district took 3.2 million yuan in bribes and embezzled another 2.9 million yuan, Mr Wu said. A deputy department director of Shanghai Institute of Pharmaceutical Industry accepted 1.24 million yuan in bribes, while the general manager of the Shanghai Feed Import and Export Company took 1.2 million yuan. The chief justice of the Shanghai Higher People's Court, Teng Yilong, told lawmakers that the courts handled more than 1.1 million cases in the past five years, with a backlog of another 1.1 million. He said the court handled 2,124 corruption cases. With rapid development, white-collar crimes were also on the rise in Shanghai, state media said. Meanwhile, the worst case of violence agaisnt Shanghai police grabbed headlines earlier this month. A vice gang killed one policeman and seriously injured another as they were detaining four alleged prostitutes.
