More than 1,300 criminal gangs have been smashed by Chinese
police in the latest campaign against organized crime.
By the end of October police had referred 196 cases of alleged
organized crime for prosecution and 1,347 crime gangs had been
broken according to the office for the national campaign against
organized crime.
In China organized crime gangs are often protected by public
officials and state staff through bribery, threats or other
means.?
Prosecutors had been exposing the "umbrellas" covering gangs
with 33 cases uncovered involving 47 state workers, said Huang
Hailong, deputy director of the investigation and supervision
department of the Supreme People's Procuratorate.
Meanwhile police put 3.75 million criminal cases on file for
investigation in the first ten months of this year. This is 41,000
fewer, or 1.1 percent down, from the same period last year and the
number of cases resolved increased by 113,000 to 2.21 million, the
office said.
"In general public security has been relatively stable this
year," a spokesman from the office said.
(Xinhua News Agency November 24, 2006)