Song Lin, Jiang Jiemin, Guo Yongxiang and Xu Minjie (CFP)

On April 17, China's anti-graft authority confirmed that Song Lin, Chairman of the China Resources Capital Holdings Co. Ltd., is under investigation for suspected violations of discipline and law.

The news was released respectively by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Ministry of Supervision on their official websites.

Song, also the Party chief of the China Resources, had already been publicly accused of corruption for the second time, by a journalist with the Economic Information Daily affiliated with Xinhua News Agency on April 15.

Wang Wenzhi, the journalist who made the accusations, wrote a letter to the anti-graft watchdog claiming that Song had committed derelictions of duty and was keeping a mistress.

"Song arranged for his mistress to work in the Hong Kong and Shanghai branches of the United Bank of Switzerland. The mistress became an important channel for Song's accepting of bribes and conducting money laundering," Wang said in the letter.

Citizens have been encouraged to expose corrupt officials' involvement in bribery or corrupt behavior. Real-name reporting is an effective way for exposing corruption. Song is the latest in a string of senior state-owned enterprise (SOE) executives detained for corruption charges.

Getting results

The year 2013 was a particularly fruitful period for the anti-graft campaign launched by the new leadership. Among SOEs, 31 senior executives, including 20 chief executives, were sacked due to losses or corruption, according to The Beijing News, citing incomplete statistics on the campaign.

"That many SOE executives are being investigated shows that central authorities are determined to root out corruption in sensitive sectors," said Mao Zhaohui, Director of the Center for Anti-Corruption and Clean Government at Beijing-based Renmin University of China.

"In many of these cases, corruption involved many persons and mainly happened in monopoly industries, such as oil, steel, coal, power, telecommunications and aviation," Mao said.

For example, Xu Long, former Chairman of China Mobile's Guangdong Branch, was revealed last August by the detention of other two high China Mobile officials—Li Xinze, former General Manager of China Mobile's Guangzhou Branch, and Sun Lian, former general manager of the program planning division of Guangdong Mobile.

Xu Minjie, former Executive Director of China COSCO Holdings Co., was apprehended last November as part of the investigations into Mao Shijia, former Chairman of Dalian Ruihai Petrochemical Shipping.

The most influential arrest happened in the oil sector. According to a report from Beijing Times, at least 45 people related to China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), the country's largest oil and gas producer and supplier, have been investigated over graft allegations since last year.

Among them, 21 were managers at CNPC, and the other 24 were not company employees but had business with it, the report said.

The most recent case occurred on April 12, when Yan Cunzhang, General Manager of the CNPC's International Department, was probed for grave discipline violation.

The same day, Zhao Miao, head of the Organization Department of the CPC Sichuan Provincial Committee, was announced to be under investigation by the province's anti-graft body. Zhao worked at CNPC's Sichuan bureau from 1982 to 2005.

In August last year, the CNPC removed four senior executives from their posts because of allegations of corruption.

In March, Li Dongsheng, former General Manager and deputy Party chief of the CNPC's Sichuan Branch, was taken in for investigation. Insiders say Li is being investigated for involvement in a bidding scandal in Pengzhou, Sichuan Province.

On April 9, Guo Yongxiang, former Vice Governor of Sichuan Province, was stripped of Party membership and expelled from public office for serious law and discipline violations. Guo worked for the CNPC from 1972 to 1998.

Within the CNPC, 148 anti-graft officials were asked by the company to report their work in a recent campaign, according to a report released on April 13 on the website of the CCDI.

Jiang Jiemin, former head of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), is the highest-ranking of all the officials under investigation for activities related to CNPC. Jiang was arrested last September on corruption allegations.

Jiang is also the first member of the 18th CPC Central Committee to be purged since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012.

Born in east China's Shandong Province in 1955, Jiang graduated from the University of Shandong and also took an in-service postgraduate course for ministerial officials and provincial heads at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee.