China's Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) has turned the
focus of its anti-graft campaign on to officials taking bribes from
real estate developers.
Any civil servant would face prosecution if evidence was found
of their involvement in commercial corruption, colluding with
developers or selling their authority, said Zhang Geng, executive
deputy procurator-general of the SPP.
Zhang said the problems in the real estate sector, including
unreasonably high housing prices and inferior quality public works,
had violated the public interest and become one of the most serious
concerns of the public.
"It is highly possible that those problems are connected with
serious crimes of commercial bribery," Zhang said at a national
teleconference of the SPP.
China's prosecuting departments investigated more than 9,000
cases of commercial corruption in 2006, one third of which involved
engineering projects and land sales.
Zhang asked prosecuting organs across the country to be alert to
and to earnestly investigate commercial corruption in land
administration and real estate development.
He told prosecutors to encourage public reports of possible
offences to "expand the channels for clues in the investigation of
commercial bribery".
The campaign will last till the end of this year, according to
the SPP.
(Xinhua News Agency April 26, 2007)