Top court: corruption crackdown will continue

China's top court said it will continue punishing judicial corruption with "zero tolerance" and "firm hands", aiming to crackdown on cases that are influenced by relationships and money.

Zhou Qiang, president of the Supreme People's Court, said on Tuesday that the court system cannot tolerate judicial corruption and must fight against it with strong measures, boosting supervision in the legal system to punish bad examples to the community.

In recent years, a series of corruption cases have been exposed in the judicial system, which indicates weak disciplinary awareness and a perception of being above the law among Chinese court staff members, Zhou said.

Shaky ideals and a lack of faith in the law caused legal officials to heed selfish desires and make use of their power to seek private interest, according to Zhou.

He said every judicial staff member should take warning from the cases exposed, while senior officials and heads should set good examples to keep the judicial system clean.

He called on officials to be good examples in observing laws and discipline, asking them to build up judicial integrity, be familiar with rules and discipline, and revere laws.

Every court official must enhance clean judicial awareness and hold the bottom line when dealing with cases and making friends, he said.

Management, education, supervision and punishment in the judicial system will be stricter, he said, to avoid legal officers making mistakes.

During the Tuesday conference, Zhou also required all courts to further develop transparency and improve their judicial supervision using information technology, to avoid their management mechanism becoming a "paper tiger".

On the same day, China's top disciplinary watchdog disclosed 10 cases of police officers, prosecutors and judges who were punished for transgressions ranging from bribe-taking and drunken driving to homicide, as part of an intensified effort to curb corruption and improve work style.

The cases that were made public included those of Cao Yunping, the former deputy head of the Guizhou provincial department of justice, and Liu Yong, an official with the Supreme People's Court.

Cao and several other officials were dismissed for not fulfilling their duties by keeping prohibited goods out of prisons in the province, while Liu was punished after he was found to have accepted bribes of about 2 million yuan ($330,000).

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