China will investigate and severely punish illegal and corrupt deeds and build a long term mechanism to guard against corruption in the financial sector, said a senior official with the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Wu Guanzheng, secretary of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection made the remarks at a seminar on strengthening efforts to curb corruption in the financial sector held Wednesday.

"The frequent transgressions in China's financial sector have brought great losses to the country, the society and financial institutions," said Wu, "We should study how corruption takes place, find out the reasons of the corrupt cases, and root out the conditions for corruption to grow and spread."

(Xinhua News Agency May 19, 2005)