All leading Party and government officials in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, will have their files audited before leaving office.

According to the new measures, all the city's officials will have to be audited when they are promoted, transferred, dismissed, sacked, complete term of office, retire or resign.

The general offices of Guangzhou municipal committee of the Communist Party of China and the city government jointly issued a notice, asking the city's audit department to establish special files for the city's senior Party and government officials.

Those who refuse to be audited, give false testimony, destroy or transfer evidence and cover up the truth will receive disciplinary punishment from the Party and the administration or be prosecuted if found to have committed any crime on investigation, according to the notice.

Wu Dasheng, a local legal expert, said the new regulation would certainly help establish a clean and honest government department to prevent and reduce corruption cases.

"It shows the government's stance to fight corruption and other violations of regulations and rules," he said.

The new regulation was introduced after a large sum of construction funds was found to have been misappropriated in recent years in Guangzhou.

In 2007 alone, more than 802 million yuan ($117 million) of funds - including 65.85 million yuan meant for building low-cost apartments - were misused by the city's departments and companies, according to Yuan Jinxia, director of city's audit office.

In another development, four prefecture-level Party and government officials were sacked because of corruption in Guangdong province in the first three quarter of 2007.

Zeng Dexin and Huang Xuming, former president and deputy general manager of Guangdong Shaoguan Iron and Steel Group, and Zhang Jian, deputy director of the No 5 research institute of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, took bribes worth 4.09 million yuan, 2.23 million yuan and more than 1 million yuan respectively.

"The first quarter of this year has seen a rise in cases of corruption in the province," said Zheng Hong, procurator-general of the provincial people's procuratorate, saying the anti-graft system of the city would concentrate on big cases.

(China Daily April 22, 2009)