A top prosecutor told the Shanghai's People's Congress (SPC) yesterday the crackdown on corruption in the city was proving highly effective.

Shanghai investigated a total of 446 corruption cases last year. This is up 10.9 percent on 2005. And at least seven officials have faced inquiries over the city's pension-fund scandal.

Wu Guangyu, director of the Shanghai Prosecutors' Office, said in his 14-page report to the legislature that Zhou Zhengyi, a former city property and securities tycoon, had been arrested for "the falsification of large sums of value-added tax invoices and bribery."

In a separate report to the SPC plenary session, Teng Yilong, director of the Shanghai Higher People's Court, said judges ruled on 394 corruption and malpractice cases last year.

The SPC deputies will break into groups to discuss the two reports before voting to accept or reject them on Saturday.

"We have further enhanced our investigative work on corruption and malpractice cases," Wu said. "We're also highly concentrated on the investigation of the pension-fund case."

In cooperation with national prosecutors the city office sent more than 50 representatives to tackle the pension-fund case, Wu said.

The seven officials identified in the pension case are:

Wang Guoxiong, a former general manager of the Shanghai Industrial Investment Group and Li Yizeng, the group's former finance officer.

Han Fanghe, a former general manager of the Hua'an Fund Management Company.

Wu Hongmei, a former deputy director of the Shanghai State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.

Cheng Yanmin, a former deputy director of the investment department of the Shanghai Electric Assets Management Company Ltd.

Xu Wei, a former chief financial officer of the Shanghai Electric Group.

Zhu Wenjin, a former director of the land-utilization management department of the Shanghai Housing, Land and Resource Administrative Bureau.

Investigations into the misuse of the city's pension fund brought down former Shanghai Party Secretary, Chen Liangyu, in September.

Shanghai has retrieved all of the embezzled social security funds of 3.7 billion yuan.

(Shanghai Daily February 1, 2007)