Cooling hotbed of corruption

The execution of the former vice-mayors of Hangzhou and Suzhou on Tuesday for taking huge sums of money in bribes, demonstrates the authorities' resolution to fight against corruption.

But the way both officials extracted bribes from real estate developers points to institutional loopholes and a lack of effective supervision, which made it possible for them to abuse their power.

Xu Maiyong, former vice-mayor of Hangzhou, capital city of East China's Zhejiang province, got land for realtors in exchange for kickbacks. He received 145 million yuan ($22.4 million) in bribes and embezzled more than 53 million yuan. He even got a piece of land that originally belonged to a university for a realtor and then helped the realtor get the land purchase payment of 71 million yuan that should have gone to the university. He became popularly known as the vice-mayor in possession of a lot of money, a lot of houses and a lot of women.