Former Shanghai Party Chief Chen Liangyu is now detained in jail and waits for trial, China's disciplinary watchdog confirmed in Beijing Thursday.

Gan Yisheng, spokesman for the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China (CPC), said Chen's case has been handed over to prosecutors.

"The prosecutors are investigating Chen's case and the court will decide the date for the trail," he said.

Chen Liangyu was expelled from the CPC and dismissed from all government posts on July 26 for corruption charges. He was also removed Tuesday from his position as deputy to the 10th National People's Congress on July 24.

Chen, born in 1946, was the secretary of CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee and member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee when his corruption scandal broke out.

According to the investigation by the CPC watchdog, Chen had misused his power to support the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Labor and Social Security to grant huge amount of loans from the Shanghai social security fund to his favorite private companies illegally.

He also lent a hand to help private companies purchase shares of state-owned enterprises, which caused great damage to the public assets.

Chen was accused to have abused his power to seek illegal profits in project examination and approval, fund allocation, investment attraction, land planning and promoting inferior officials. Both Chen and his family received bribes worth "a huge amount of money."

He was also "morally decadent," an earlier CPC statement said, noting that he took advantage of his post to "philander" and traded his power with sexual favors.

(Xinhua News Agency August 2, 2007)