1,175 mafia-style gangs busted amid crackdown

A three-year nationwide crackdown on organized crime launched more than two years ago had busted 1,175 mafia-style gangs in rural areas by the end of October, a top organized crime watchdog said on Friday.

Data released by the national office against organized crime of the Communist Party of China Central Committee's Political and Legal Affairs Commission showed that authorities also smashed 13,422 other criminal gangs and punished 3,727 village "bullies".

At the same time, about 41,700 village officials who had been subject to criminal punishment or had problems such as involvement in gangs were removed from their posts.

Village bullies often abuse, beat, threaten or intimidate other residents for personal gain, seriously endangering others' lives and property, said the office. Among the settled cases related to village bullies nationwide, a total of 63 people were killed and 4,166 injured.

The village bullies also seek to participate in the management of village affairs, and after becoming village officials they intervene in engineering projects, resource development and market management, it said.

In the cases investigated nationwide, village bullies embezzled about 560 million yuan ($85 million); accepted bribes of 274 million yuan; misappropriated 4.2 billion yuan in funds and assets; withheld more than 58 million yuan in various funds benefiting farmers, such as those for poverty alleviation; and illegally intervened in 2,466 projects, causing heavy losses of rural collective assets and damaging the interests of villagers.

According to the office, authorities screened 101,621 Party committees at the village and community level that had problems, with 91 percent of them rectified. Of those committees that were deemed to have had problems, 5,579 were involved in organized crimes, and 97 percent of those issues had been rectified.

Governments at all levels also carried out operations to address issues related to collective funds, properties and resources in rural areas to restore the collective economy during the campaign. For instance, Chaozhou city of Guangdong province inspected 58,091 rural collective economic contracts and cleared 5,218 cases of occupied land covering nearly 860 hectares, which effectively prevented the loss of rural collective assets.