(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-12-06 19:38

Chinese prosecutors have found high incidence of commercial bribery in infrastructure and real estate projects, most implicating the government officials in charge.

In the first 10 months, procuratorates across China have investigated 4,240 bribery cases in infrastructure and real estate projects, accounting for 48.4 percent of the total commercial bribery cases, a press release issued by the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPS) said Thursday.

The cases involved a total of 657 million yuan ($87.6 million), the statement said. It added that 3,039 of the cases each involved 50,000 yuan or more.

"Most of the bribery cases involved the sacking of officials and even those in charge of city planning, land management or utility administrations," said a SPS spokesman.

To date, prosecutors had taken 1,613 government officials to court and 340 were officials in charge, the SPS reported.

Zhang Zhiguang, a former director of the Qingdao City planning bureau in east China's Shandong Province, was found to have taken 3 million yuan in bribes from contractors by asking his cousin to fake contracts with the companies involved.

In July, Zhao Zhanqi, the former transport chief of east China's Zhejiang Province, was sentenced to life imprisonment for taking bribes of 6.2 million yuan.

He had used his authority to influence project tenders and contracts when he held the posts of vice director of the provincial development and planning commission, deputy head of the Xiaoshan airport construction headquarters and head of the provincial communications department.

"Bribery occurred more in public infrastructure and government-funded real estate projects," the SPS spokesman said. He added such cases accounted for 64.7 percent of the 4,240 cases.

To cope with the increasing commercial bribery in these fields, SPS has issued a special scheme for investigating such cases. It has also directly supervised probes on 20 big cases, including that of Yin Guoyuan, former deputy director of Shanghai Housing, Land and Resources Administration.

The SPS listed the four most vulnerable areas for bribery as city infrastructure, land transfer, project construction and real estate development.