Last year's anti-graft drive led to the imprisonment of nine high-ranking officials, Chief Justice Xiao Yang said yesterday.

Presenting a work report to the annual session of the 10th National People's Congress (NPC), Xiao, who is president of the Supreme People's Court (SPC), said a total of 825 government officials ranking above county level were sentenced in 2006.

"Of those convicted, nine held provincial or ministerial-level positions, while 92 were at the prefecture level," Xiao said.

The nation's courts last year heard 23,733 cases of embezzlement, bribery and dereliction of duty, of which 8,310 were bribery cases involving government employees, said the report.

Xiao said that one of the key objectives for the courts in 2007 is to continue to facilitate the country's anti-corruption drive.

"The courts will continue to seriously punish crimes of graft, dereliction of duty and commercial bribery in accordance with the law," he said.

Both the government and the judiciary have given a high priority to the fight against corruption involving officials, as such cases have stirred considerable public resentment, he said

In a separate report delivered yesterday at the NPC session, top prosecutor Jia Chunwang said a crackdown on job-related crimes was one of the key tasks undertaken last year by the country's procuratorial bodies.

A total of 33,668 cases involving 40,041 people were investigated for corruption, bribery and other job-related crimes. Of the people questioned, 29,966 were prosecuted, said Jia, who is procurator-general of the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP).

In terms of status, 2,736 of the government employees investigated for job-related crimes held positions above county level. Of those, 202 were at the prefecture level and six were at provincial or ministerial level.

Jia said that the procuratorial departments had actively joined the country's drive to curb commercial bribery.

A total of 9,582 commercial graft cases involving government employees were investigated in 2006, involving more than 1.5 billion yuan ($193.6 million), according to Jia.

"Many of these cases involved large numbers of people," Jia said. "By investigating them and punishing those we found to be guilty, we succeeded in landing a major blow in the fight against commercial bribery."

Jia said that one of the SPP's key successes last year was the graft case brought against State Food and Drug Administration officials, which led to the downfall of Zheng Xiaoyu, the former head of the drug watchdog.

Zheng, who was found to have taken bribes to allow companies to get around drug approval standards, was expelled from the Communist Party of China and given an administrative penalty.

The anti-corruption drive by the two judicial bodies has won approval from NPC deputies.

"Reports show that both the SPC and the SPP have made significant progress in cracking down on corruption and maintaining justice," said Zhao Long, a CPPCC member.

(China Daily 03/14/2007 page6)