China penalises senior officials for gambling

[World News]: Beijing, Jan 28 : China today announced that a number of senior officials including a city mayor and a police officer have been penalised for engaging in gambling under a national campaign to root out corruption and illegal activities. Deng Yaohua, former mayor of Zhaoqing City in south China's Guangdong province and deputy secretary of the CPC Zhaoqing municipal committee, Wu Huali, former director of Public Security Bureau of Huizhou City, also in Guangdong, and Yu Changliang, an official of the Housing Resettlement Office of Jinan City in eastern Shandong Province were punished for their involvement in gambling, officials said. The news was announced at a joint news conference held by the Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese Ministry of Supervision, Xinhua news agency reported. The Chinese government recently announced it would launch a "relentless fight" against gambling in a bid to smash the rampant gambling among corrupt Chinese officials and state-owned company executives. It cited on-line gambling, gambling in casinos and illegal lotteries as the major targets of the strike. PTI