SHANGHAI: More people are reporting the misdeeds of high officials following investigation into the misappropriation of 3.7 billion yuan from the city's social security fund, the Shanghai People's Prosecutors' Office said.

Yan Yukang, director of the office's Offense Reporting Center, said prosecutors are receiving fewer tip-offs on divisional head officials, and more on those of department heads or above.

Tip-offs on corruption involving high level officials last year showed a 9 percent increase over the year before. In the first three months of this year it was 16 percent higher year-on-year.

Most of the tip-offs concerned officials in charge of outsourcing, fee collection and construction.

No details on individual cases have been released as most are still under investigation.

Yan said the determination to fight corruption that the central government had shown in investigating the social security fund scandal, had contributed immensely to the increase in tip-offs.

The scandal, discovered last September, led to the sacking and arrest of a dozen senior officials, including the former Shanghai Party secretary Chen Liangyu.

Yan appealed for more members of the public to come forward to help in the fight against corruption.

From June last year to the end of last month, prosecutors' offices in Shanghai had investigated 470 people involved in 419 cases, 133 cases were from tip-offs involving 151 people.

"We hope more people can report cases that can be traced," Yan said.

"Clues and details informants think are unimportant can be vital to our investigations.

"Informants can simply leave us a telephone number or clues to an alleged offense if he or she does not wish to be identified.

"We have strict rules on protecting informants."

To encourage more tip-offs on corruption, all prosecutors' offices have raised rewards. In Shanghai, informants can now receive a maximum of 10,000 yuan.

(China Daily 06/14/2007 page4)