China's Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) has turned the focus of its anti-graft campaign on to officials taking bribes from real estate developers.

 

Any civil servant would face prosecution if evidence was found of their involvement in commercial corruption, colluding with developers or selling their authority, said Zhang Geng, executive deputy procurator-general of the SPP.

 

Zhang said the problems in the real estate sector, including unreasonably high housing prices and inferior quality public works, had violated the public interest and become one of the most serious concerns of the public.

 

"It is highly possible that those problems are connected with serious crimes of commercial bribery," Zhang said at a national teleconference of the SPP.

 

China's prosecuting departments investigated more than 9,000 cases of commercial corruption in 2006, one third of which involved engineering projects and land sales.

 

Zhang asked prosecuting organs across the country to be alert to and to earnestly investigate commercial corruption in land administration and real estate development.

 

He told prosecutors to encourage public reports of possible offences to "expand the channels for clues in the investigation of commercial bribery".

 

The campaign will last till the end of this year, according to the SPP.

 

(Xinhua News Agency April 26, 2007)