Last year the Communist Party of China's (CPC) discipline inspection commission punished 130 cadres in an intensified battle against misconduct and corruption among lawmen.

 

Fifty-two of the 130 disciplined were chief prosecutors or deputies and the remaining 78 held leading posts in departments under procuratorates, according to the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) on Thursday.

 

Jia Chunwang, procurator-general of the SPP, warned at a national conference in Beijing that the harm done by these disgraced prosecutors shouldn’t be underestimated.

 

He ordered staff at local procuratorates to improve their approach to work and to maintain moral integrity to ensure the country's judicial staff weren’t corrupt. 

 

Greater efforts were required to be made to identify corrupt prosecutors who abused their power, sought personal gain or harmed public interests by not addressing their work appropriately, said Jia. Reports show that China disciplined 273 prosecutors in 2006 for corruption.

 

Twenty-seven prosecutors are under criminal investigation, according to sources from the CPC’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. A total of 178 police officers were also convicted on criminal charges last year, according to the Ministry of Public Security on Thursday.

 

Zhu Chunlin, secretary of the ministry's Commission for Discipline Inspection, revealed that officials had uncovered 4,442 cases of violations of administrative and CPC discipline. These included obtaining confessions by torture, firearm abuse, the misuse of other equipment, accepting bribes and government procurement irregularities.

 

The cases involved 5,942 officers of whom 3,044 received administrative penalties and 858 who were penalized under CPC rules. However, he explained the number of cases was down 8.4 percent on 2005.

 

(Xinhua News Agency February 9, 2007)