China investigates senior Xinjiang security official for graft

BEIJING - Prosecutors have begun an investigation into a former senior security official in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region for suspected abuse of power and corruption, the government said on Monday.

Li Yanming had been Communist Party chief and vice president of the Xinjiang Police College, which trains public security officials, and a member of the Party committee of the region's the Public Security Department until the Party opened the investigation in May.

The Supreme People's Procuratorate said in a statement on its website Li had been put under "compulsory measures". Li is suspected of abusing his position and taking bribes, the prosecutor said, without providing other details.

According to China's Criminal Procedure Law, compulsory measures include summons by force, bail, residential surveillance, detention and arrest. The SPP did not specify the measures it had taken.

President Xi Jinping has pushed a sweeping crackdown on corruption since taking power two years ago. Xi, like others before him, warned that the problem is so severe it could affect the party's ability to maintain power.

The energy-rich region of Xinjiang, which sits strategically on the borders of Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and Central Asia, has not been as much a focus of the government's graft crackdown as other parts of China.

In October, the ethnic Uighur mayor of Hotan, a major city in the south of Xinjiang, was put under investigation for corruption, one of the few ethnic minorities caught up in Xi's campaign.