Former railways minister Liu Zhijun is still under disciplinary investigation nearly one year after being removed from office, an official with the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China (CPC) said.
Cui Shaopeng, spokesman of the commission, the Party's top disciplinary watchdog, released the information at a press conference on Friday in Beijing.
Liu was sacked last year for an alleged "severe violation of discipline." He was alledgedly responsible for several major railway accidents last year.
According to an investigation report into the deadly bullet train crash in Zhejiang Province last July released on December 28, Liu "bore the main responsibility for the accident."
Liu "arbitrarily raised the speed of the Hangzhou - Wenzhou high-speed service to 250 kilometers per hour (kph) from its designed 200 kph limit. He sped up construction time without considering safety and failed to adopt a new signaling system for the service," the 66-page report said.
Separately, in 2011, the country's supervision authorities and CPC disciplinary authorities investigated 137,859 cases of discipline violations and concluded probes into 136,679 of these cases, which led to 142,893 people facing punishment, according to Cui.
A total of 4,843 Chinese officials at above county-head level were punished for such discipline violations in 2011.
Major violation cases involving former senior officials, such as Liu Zhuozhi, former vice chairman of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, have been transferred to judicial departments for further investigation and punishment, Cui said.
A number of 1,480 cases of illegal land appropriations and demolitions were handled in 2011, and 509 people involved were held accountable, Qu Wanxiang, vice minister of supervision under the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said Friday at the conference.
A total of 269 officials were punished for dereliction of duty in 13 major road and railway accidents, pipeline blasts, building fires and mine accidents, and 107 of them have been transferred to judicial departments for further investigation and punishment, according to Qu.
Xinhua - Global Times