China probes 23,000 corruption cases

Asian Economic News, Sept 18, 2000

BEIJING, Sept. 14 Kyodo

Chinese prosecutors investigated more than 23,000 cases of corruption in the first eight months of this year and recovered 1.59 billion yuan (about $191.7 million), Xinhua News Agency reported Thursday.

Quoting Zhao Dengju, deputy procurator general of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, Xinhua said the number of corruption cases which involved at least 50,000 yuan in embezzlement, or 100,000 yuan in misuse of public funds accounted for 43.7% of the total.

Those cases had increased by 10,000, or 12.7%, from the same period last year.

The number of cases involving illegal use of money and goods worth more than 1 million yuan came to more than 800, up 11.7% over the same period last year, Xinhua said.

Earlier Thursday, a former vice chairman of China's parliament, Cheng Kejie, was executed after being found guilty of accepting huge sums in bribes, Xinhua reported.