An unprecedented maximum amount of 100,000 yuan (US$12,000) is now being offered as a reward to Beijing residents who volunteer information on corrupt officials, the Beijing Municipal People's Procuratorate announced.

The reward is the highest in the country, the Beijing News quoted sources with the Supreme People's Procuratorate as saying.

Sources with the capital procuratorate authority said the reward is likely to be given to those who provide help to public procurators during investigations. Rewards may climb even higher when the cases are determined to be sufficiently important and when more than 95 percent of the economic loss is recovered.

In the past, the highest reward offered by the Beijing Municipal People's Procuratorate was 10,000 yuan (US$1,200). Rising losses resulting from corruption justified the substantial increase.

On most occasions, rewards of 2 to 3 percent of the embezzled figure will be offered to people who help lead authorities to the offenders.

Zhang Huirong, an official with the municipal procuratorate, encourages more concerned citizens to sign their reports, stating that identities of informants will remain confidential unless they wish them to be made public.

Most reports are unsigned because of safety concerns.

Lu Jingyi, a grassroots township official in Henan Province, was seriously injured and his wife killed after he reported a Party official in Pingdingshan City. Guo Guangyun of Hebei Province and Zhou Wei of Liaoning Province were both illegally detained in labor camps after reporting high-ranking officials to the central government.

Zhang said a strict management system has been established to ensure the secrecy of the reports.

"For online reporting, a password known only to the person reporting is given. Even the chief procurator has no idea who reports," Zhang said.

In June, the No. 2 Branch of the Beijing Municipal People's Procuratorate offered a reward of 30,000 yuan (US$3,600), an unusually high sum under the old policy.

In another effort to remedy the abuse of power by government officials, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Finance is beginning to take action against the funneling of public capital to relatives by officials.

More than 200 municipal-level government organs and 18 district and county governments have reported such incidents to the municipal finance bureau.

Public funds lent to relatives of government officials are required to be returned within a certain period.

During the past three years, procuratorate offices at all levels throughout the municipality have received 5,299 tip-offs on crimes connected with abuse of authority. They have investigated and filed 1,563 cases, 257 of which involved more than one million yuan (US$120,000), according to Beijing Municipal People's Procurator Xu Haifeng.

A total of 114 high-ranking officials were convicted and sentenced during that period, and 667 million yuan (US$83 million) in economic losses was avoided, Xu said.

(China Daily, China.org.cn September 16, 2004)