The corruption scandal in Guangdong's legal system has spread to Shenzhen, with two senior Communist Party officials in charge of anti-graft issues being detained, sources said yesterday.
Shenzhen media and government sources revealed that anti-graft officers from Beijing had taken into custody two officials from the city's Discipline Inspection Commission last weekend. The officials have not been named.
Their detention occurred almost at the same time as officials from the party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection detained Guangdong's top political adviser Chen Shaoji in Guangzhou, and former head of the Guangdong anti-graft operation Wang Huayuan, who is now in Zhejiang.
The commission confirmed yesterday that Mr Chen and Mr Wang were under investigation for severely violating party discipline, Xinhua reported.
One of the Shenzhen sources said it was believed the two detained Shenzhen officials were related to Mr Wang's case because they had been his subordinates when he was in Guangdong,
The source said it remained unclear how many Guangdong officials had been involved in the cases of Mr Chen and Mr Wang, which many local officials and scholars considered the most significant in Guangdong in at least 30 years.
He said Mr Chen was the first detained provincial-level leader in Guangdong, and Mr Wang was the first head of a provincial anti-corruption operation being put under shuanggui, a form of party discipline before they are turned over to prosecutors.