The provincial people's procuratorate of Guangdong has vowed to keep a "close watch" on possible cases of corruption relating to the State and province's massive investment projects this year.

Guangdong blew the lid off "413 major corruption cases" in the first quarter of this year, which is 87.3 percent of the total number of cases under investigation, Lin Junjie, a press official with the provincial procuratorate, said yesterday.

Any case involving a sum of 50,000 yuan ($7,300) is referred to as "major", Lin said.

Four senior officials at the level of a provincial government department head were detained in the first three months of 2009, three of whom accepted huge amounts of bribes, he said, adding, the fourth official was still being investigated.

"The three senior officials are Zeng Dexin and Huang Xuming, former president and deputy general manager of Guangdong Shaoguan Iron and Steel Group respectively, and Zhang Jian, deputy director of the No 5 research institute of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology," he said.

It has been confirmed Zheng took bribes worth 4.09 million yuan; Huang, 2.23 million yuan; and Zhang, over 1 million yuan, he said. The official did not disclose any information about the fourth suspect.

Liu Zirong, a village leader in Foshan's Chancheng district, was found to have misused public funds worth a whopping 21.7 million yuan.

Authorities also found a project manager, named Liang Xianliu, with a State-owned enterprise guilty of embezzling 7 million yuan, and a department manager of China Telecom's Guangzhou branch, Xian Tingzhou, guilty of accepting bribes to the tune of 2.3 million yuan.

"The first quarter of this year has seen a rise in cases of corruption in the province," said Zheng Hong, procurator-general of the provincial people's procuratorate, at a meeting on Tuesday, adding: "The anti-graft system across the province will concentrate on big cases this year."

(China Daily April 2, 2009)