(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-08-07 21:46

Trials have begun in a wide-ranging pension fund scandal in China's business hub of Shanghai that brought down the city's top official, a magazine reported.

Seven people have been indicted in Shanghai, with the trial of Wang Guoxiong, a manager with a city government investment arm, among those already under way, the highly regarded business weekly Caijing reported in its edition published Monday.

Others face trials in the neighboring province of Anhui and the northern province of Jilin, where 14 officials and state industry managers are under indictment, including the head of Shanghai's social security bureau, it said.

Other Shanghai and Jilin spokesmen declined to comment or could not be reached.

The highest official to fall in the case was Shanghai's Communist Party secretary Chen Liangyu, who is reportedly in jail awaiting trial on corruption charges. Authorities announced last month that Chen had been expelled from the party and removed from all government positions.

Chen is the highest-level Chinese official to be dismissed in a decade and is accused of being at the center of the high-profile scandal in which $400 million in pension funds were improperly invested in real estate and toll road projects.

Dozens have been questioned or detained in the scandal, including Wang Weigong, a former secretary to Huang Ju who died of cancer in June.

Wang has been suspended from his current job at a government power company for "severe discipline violations," a Shanghai government spokeswoman said on condition of anonymity. She said the investigation into Wang was continuing but gave no other details.