China targets bribers in fight against corruption
- Source: Xinhua
- [17:20 September 06 2009]
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In 2009, prosecutors across the country stepped up checking on bribery in the businesses of construction, land transfer, property trade, insurance and bank credit as the public voiced strong dissatisfaction over the obscurity of these industries.
China's Criminal Law says if one offers bribes worth more than 10,000 yuan to seek illegal gains, or to more than three people, to Party or government officials or judiciary staff, which incurs great damage to state or social interests, this person would be charged with offering bribes and would likely to receive prison terms from below five years to life imprisonment.
But penalties could be exempted or alleviated if suspects voluntarily confessed, the law says.
Taking bribes would receive heavier penalties than offering bribes in China. Chinese law rules that government employees who take bribes of more than 100,000 yuan would be sentenced to over 10 years in prison and those who commit more serious crimes might face life imprisonment or execution.
The CPC Central Committee made clear in a work plan on building a corruption prevention system (2008-2012): "The aim of setting up a blacklist database on commercial bribery is to take illegal trading, especially bribe offering, as an important factor for not granting market admittance."
The SPP official said the database was to show the "heavy cost of offering bribes" and promote honest and credible business operation, ordered market competition and social justice.
The SPP ordered that all provincial procuratorates should have all the convicted bribers blacklisted for public inquiry in 2006.
Eastern China's Zhejiang Province established the country's first provincial bribery blacklist in 2003, focusing on the construction field.
A total of 60,748 companies and 63,179 people made inquiries in the previous Zhejiang database of five industries. A total of 102 offenders were identified, according to the province's procuratorate.
The unnamed SPP official said referring to the blacklist would be an "unofficial procedure" for individuals and companies to undergo administrative examination and approval, public tender or finding a business partner.
In March 2009, a construction company was eliminated from a tender when the procuratorate of Beilun district of Ningbo City, upon the request of the tenderer, found its legal representative surnamed Lai was convicted of bribery in 2007.
In another case, a representative of a medical group affiliated to a foreign-funded corporation in Shanghai went to the local procuratorate to find out whether a retail trader surnamed Wang, who is the general manager of a medical equipment company, had offered bribes.
The procuratorate replied that Wang had been sentenced to imprisonment of three years with a four-year reprieve on Nov. 15, 2005. Between December 2003 and April 2005, Wang offered bribes worth 430,000 yuan to companies with business connections to seek illegal gains.
The medical group immediately cut the partnership ties with the retail trader and "educated all subordinate traders on honest operation," according to the procuratorate.
The SPP official said the blacklist also provided solid evidence for judiciary departments to analyze the trend of crimes offering bribes.
