Authorities in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen in Guangdong province have arrested a number of the city's traffic police personnel for selling accident reports to aid fraudulent car insurance claims, official media reported.
"Last year, the investigative office of the procuratorate charged with battling dereliction of duty and rights infringements acted on a tip-off, and broke up a racket in the Luohu district of Shenzhen," according to a report this week carried on the legal channel of the official Xinhua news website.
"Shenzhen traffic police were involved behind the scenes in a number of cases of fraudulent car insurance claims," the report said.
"A few traffic police were arrested, shocking the police force. In the same year, 2010, car insurance claims fell dramatically."
It cited the People's Property Insurance Co. as an example, which paid out 14 million yuan (U.S. $2.2 million) less in claims than in the previous year.
Notorious
Beijing-based lawyer Li Jinsong said traffic police in China are notorious for carrying out various kinds of fraud, and that corruption is totally endemic in China's political system, in the absence of any public scrutiny.
"The simplest, most direct way of supervising corrupt activities and the use of official power is through the media," Li said. "Either that, or you've got to find someone who isn't themselves corrupt to do it."
"China is still a single-party state, so the simplest method is through the media and public opinion."
But he said the level of corruption exposed still pales into insignificance compared with what some top-level officials have managed to take from public coffers.
"They are still small-time fraudsters, these traffic cops," Li said.
China's leaders in March described graft as the "biggest risk" facing the ruling Communist Party.
Mass protests
China's Communist Party faces thousands of mass protests a year across the country, often related to allegations of official wrongdoing.
Protesters and petitioners repeatedly complain of forced evictions from their homes, the sale of their farmland without compensation, and mistreatment by law enforcement agencies.
The authorities investigated 2,723 corrupt officials at or above the county level in 2010, including 188 at the prefecture level and six at the ministerial level, according to figures published this week by the Guangdong state prosecutor's office.
In his annual work report to the National People's Congress (NPC), the country's parliament, Procurator-General Cao Jianming said that his ministry had recovered "illicit" money and goods worth 7.4 billion yuan (U.S. $1.12 billion).
Reported by Gao Shan for RFA's Mandarin service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.