210 Chinese procurators punished in 2013: top procurator

BEIJING, March 10 -- China's procuratorates investigated and punished 210 prosecutors in 2013 for violating laws and regulations, as part of an ongoing campaign to "eradicate the black sheep" from among the judicial staff, the top procurator said on Monday.

According to Procurator-General Cao Jianming, 26 of them had already faced criminal charges.

The offenders had been publicly named and shamed to "sound the alarm" for their fellow prosecutors, Cao said in a report on the work of the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) delivered to the national lawmakers at the ongoing annual parliamentary session.

China is in the middle of a popular anti-corruption campaign, which targeted both "tigers and flies", referring to high and low ranking corrupt officials.

Cao said procuratorates investigated last year 2,871 public servants at county levels and above, including 253 at city levels and eight at provincial and ministerial levels, in 2,581 cases of graft, bribery, and embezzlement of public funds involving more than one million yuan (about 163,300 U.S. dollars).

Earlier report also said a total of 31 high-profile officials were investigated by the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) in 2013. Nationwide, about 182,000 officials were punished by the CPC's internal disciplinary body.

As the fight against graft picks up momentum, those in charge of rooting out graft are themselves being placed under increasing scrutiny.

The Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and the CCDI have both publicized cases of disciplinary or legal violations by their own staff.

"As supervisors, prosecutors must also learn to be supervised," Cao said in the report on Monday.

He said the SPP subjects itself to the oversight of lawmakers, political advisors and the general public, and has also enhanced openness of its work.

With regards to internal supervision, the procurator-general said the SPP sent teams to 90 procuratorates in 10 provinces to carry out open and secret inspections last year, and ordered procuratorates concerned to rectify problems found by those teams.

Meanwhile, the SPP has also stipulated a code of conduct for prosecutors outside normal office hours in a bid to root out corruption, and has set up a website for the public to report breach of laws and regulations by prosecution officials, Cao said.

He said the SPP will go all out against judicial corruption in 2014, and "firmly eradicate the black sheep" from within the prosecutors.