Low-ranking official is accused of being top in corruption stakes

Luo Yaping was only a district bureau chief in a rust-belt city in Liaoning , but the 50-year-old woman is already a record-holder to the country's top graft-busters: she's the lowest-ranking official who amassed the highest amount using the most underhanded tricks, they claim.

According to Fangyuan (Rule by Lawyers) magazine, a publication affiliated with the country's top prosecutors' office, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, investigators uncovered a total of 145 million yuan (HK$166 million) under Luo's name, including 22 properties.

The provincial prosecutors' office would not confirm the amount, as the case against Luo is still pending, but if true, that would make her the most corrupt official in Liaoning by value.

With a humble upbringing, Luo worked as a small-time correspondent for a government internal publication before she was transferred to the Land Resources Bureau's Shuncheng district branch in Fushun in the early 1990s, where she met her second husband, who was well-connected.

But her career began to take off when Shuncheng district was marked in the late 1990s for expansion as older city areas were increasingly under siege by growing oil refineries, steel mills and other manufacturers.

As the director of the district's land transaction centre in Fushun, Luo's biggest break came in March 2007, when, according to investigators, she siphoned 8 million yuan from land sales revenue.

Luo is also alleged to have stolen 10 million yuan from public coffers by falsifying the identities of 12 homeowners in compensation transactions since March 2005.