China is well aware and prepared to crack down on the illegal sales of Olympic tickets, a senior Beijing Olympic Games organizer said in Beijing on Friday.

Jiang Xiaoyu, executive vice president of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Beijing Games (BOCOG), said people's high demand for tickets once caught them off guard when the electronic booking system for Olympic tickets crashed in October.

"Chinese are very enthusiastic about watching the Games and all want to get tickets, which we did not have enough technical preparation in the second phase of ticket sale," Jiang said.

"Now we have adopted a series of measures to solve the problem," he said.

The second phase of ticket sales will close on Sunday with more than 340, 000 people having booked over 2 million tickets.

BOCOG also received bookings for 23,000 tickets to the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Paralympic Games.

As for people wanting to cash in on the huge demand for the tickets, Jiang warned they would face punishment.

"Chinese law enforcement department is well prepared for cracking down on illegal Olympic ticket sales," he said.

"Each person can only book five tickets at most, which is one of the measures to reduce the possibility of scalping," he said.

"But tickets for the Opening and Closing ceremony can be transferred once according to BOCOG's ticket transfer policy," he said.

A total of 7 million tickets for the Aug. 8-24 Games are available to the general public with nearly three quarters reserved for domestic sales.

The first batch of 1.6 million tickets were allocated by lottery earlier this year.

(Xinhua News Agency December 29, 2007)