Chinese judges tried in corruption crackdown

BEIJING, Oct 27 (Reuters) Several former judges in east China were tried this week for taking bribes, state media reported today, in the midst of a nationwide crackdown on corruption that is highlighting the scale of official abuses.

The judges were accused of taking bribes while serving in Fuyang, a city in eastern China's Anhui province that has given the country some of its most lurid corruption scandals.

A Hong Kong newspaper reported today that a similar judicial scandal was unfolding in southern China.

Zhang Zimin, former president of the Fuyang Intermediate Court, took 1.3 million yuan (2,000) in return for securing jobs for cronies and rigging court judgements, Xinhua news agency reported late yesterday.

Shang Jun, a former police officer who served on the court before becoming a vice mayor and then deputy head of the provincial health authority, took about 900,000 yuan (4,000) for arranging official jobs, Xinhua said.

She was also accused of having assets worth 980,000 yuan (4,000) from sources she could not account for.

''Numerous other judges, including several others under Zhang's supervision, were also involved in similar charges,'' the report said, citing two other cases of judges each taking bribes worth over a million yuan.

In China, as a rule, officials lose their jobs after they are charged with crimes. The judges were tried on Wednesday in Anhui, but no verdict was announced.

In the southern city of Shenzhen, five judges were questioned by anti-graft investigators in a widening judicial corruption scandal in the city, the South China Morning Post reported.

The deepening probe into judicial corruption comes after earlier reports of a Communist Party disciplinary investigation of five senior judges including Shenzhen Intermediate Court vice-president Pei Hongquan.

The judges are accused of accepting or offering bribes for promotions or favourable verdicts, the Post reported.

Chinese Communist Party chief Hu Jintao said in June that corruption was sapping the party's authority, and he has overseen a widespread crackdown on errant or disloyal officials, including Chen Liangyu, the party boss of Shanghai.

But scandal-plagued Anhui highlights the scale of official misdeeds that extend deep into the one-party state.

The Communist Party's anti-corruption Central Commission for Discipline Inspection took He Minxu, vice-governor of Anhui, into custody in June.

Shang, the dismissed judge, may have been implicated with two other provincial officials who earlier had been dismissed on corruption charges, the official Legal Daily said today.

One of them was Wang Huaizhong, former party boss of Fuyang, who was executed in 2004 for overseeing a broad corruption network.

REUTERS AB VV0953