BEIJING -- China's procuratorates have put 8,593 commercial bribery cases involving civil servants on file for investigation during the first 11 months, according to a national conference of chief procurators Tuesday.

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China's procuratorates have investigated 32,369 cases involving 38,457 officials taking bribes or dereliction of their duties from January to November, according to the conference.

Among the cases, 17,449 were cases involving huge amount of money and 2,632 officials above the county-head level were prosecuted or punished, the conference released.

Wang Zhenchuan, Deputy Procurator-General with the Supreme People's Procuratorate, said early that the commercial bribery cases mainly occurred in the fields of construction, land acquisition, ownership transfers of state-owned enterprises, government procurement, medicine and medical appliances trade, banking and securities and futures.

From the beginning of this year, China has attempted to clamp down on commercial bribery and have cracked a series of high-profile cases.

Former director of the Medical Apparatus Department under China's State Food and Drug Administration, Hao Heping, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on November 28 for taking bribes and illegal possession of firearms.

The Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court also sentenced Hao's wife Fu Yuqing to five years in prison for taking bribes.

Another notorious case involved Zheng Shide, vice director of Xuzhou Medical College, who took advantage of his post from 2000 to 2005 to seek illicit gains for others after receiving more than 500,000 yuan (64,100 U.S. dollars) in bribes.

Zheng was removed from his post and sentenced to 11 years in jail.