A TOTAL of 159 officials of Maoming City, Guangdong Province, were punished for buying and selling posts, following a reinvestigation into a massive corruption scandal by the Party’s top graft-busting agency that brought down the city’s former Party chief Luo Yinguo and more than 300 local officials, the People’s Daily reported on its official website yesterday.

    Eight of them were demoted, 63 removed from their posts, 71 transferred to other posts, one ordered to retire earlier than the official retirement age and 16 given admonition, the report said.

    Buying and selling of official posts were rampant in Maoming, with section chief positions at government agencies going for hundreds of thousands of yuan and the vice mayor position for millions, according to the report.

    The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection stationed a task force of 70 graft-busters in Maoming last month in order to review the wide-ranging corruption case.

    A vice-ministerial-level official, Zhou Zhenhong, was the highest-ranking official brought down by the Maoming scandal. He was the province’s United Front Work Department chief and preceded Luo as Maoming’s Party chief.

    The latest investigation was a result of President Xi Jinping’s pledge to crack down on corrupt officials, regardless of their seniority, the source said. If corruption is not curbed, it will pose a very real threat to the Party’s continued rule, Xi had warned.

    Luo was arrested in February 2011 and charged with exploiting his office to receive bribes and possessing a large amount of assets from unidentified sources.

    Some media outlets reported that up to 10 million yuan (US$1.59 million) in cash was found at his home.

    The Party’s provincial anti-graft watchdog said in April last year that 303 officials, including 24 at the prefectural level and 218 at the county level — were sacked, with more than 60 prosecuted. Luo himself has yet to stand trial.(SD-Agencies)