For five Chinese companies in Shanghai, transparency has brought unwelcome results. The five, which do business in the construction and medical fields, found the interest of prospective business partners evaporated after the companies' names turned up in a bribery database.
In early 2006, the Shanghai Municipal People's Procuratorate set up a free, public database of people and enterprises with bribery convictions in the local courts. The records, which date back to 1997, have so far been checked by 404 companies and organizations and 328 individuals.
According to the Procuratorial Daily, on the first day of operation, the database got a request from an overseas medicine group, which wanted to know if the general manager of a local medical equipment company, surnamed Wang, had a record of taking bribes.
The records showed that Wang accepted bribes worth 430,000 yuan between December 2003 and April 2005. On Nov. 15, 2005, Wang was sentenced to three years behind bars with a four-year reprieve.
The foreign group suspended cooperation with Wang's company and used the case as an example in an internal anti-corruption campaign.
Domestic companies use the database, too. In September this year, a Shanghai-based infrastructure management company checked the database to see whether 34 local construction companies had bribery records. It found that senior managers with three companies had bribery convictions.
An official with the Shanghai Municipal People's Procuratorate said the database played an active role in establishing corporate and individual reputations and was an effective deterrent against bribery.
China's executive and judicial branches have repeatedly vowed to crack down on bribery. But official statistics from the Supreme People's Court indicate that these efforts have yet to yield much success
In the first seven months of this year, Chinese courts dealt with 4,406 commercial bribery cases, up 8.2 percent year-on-year.
Source: Xinhua
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