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Jailing of officials for data leaks welcomed

Updated: 2011-10-27 20:02

(Xinhua)

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SHANGHAI - Moves to tighten security of economic data in China have been welcomed after two officials were sentenced for leaking sensitive information to securities brokers.

Sun Zhen, a former secretary at the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), and Wu Chaoming, once a researcher from an institute under the People's Bank of China, were sentenced to five and six years imprisonment respectively.

The statistics leaked by the two officials concerned China's industrial added value output, gross domestic product (GDP), consumer price index (CPI), broad money supply (M2), and narrow measure of money supply (M1), said Li Zhongcheng with the Supreme People's Procuratorate at a press conference on Monday.

Since February this year, six such cases involving six people have been investigated. So far, only Sun and Wu have been convicted.

"The harsh sentencing can deter such acts as similar offences were not punished so severely in the past," said Chen Guang, lawyer and partner of Zhongyin Law Firm.

To ensure data security, the national statistics bureau said in July it would release economic data two or three days earlier than before and reduce the number of people allowed access to the information.

If speculators discover the government will relax its restrictions on real estate, they can purchase properties in order to sell when housing prices rise, said Ye Tan, finance critic and editor at National Business Daily.

"If people who leak confidential information are not punished, no one will conduct real research any more and in that case, researchers are more like public relations managers," Lu Zhengwai, lead economist of Industrial Bank Co., Ltd. , wrote on his Weibo microblog.

The two sentenced officials were "driven by profits" and either tipped off brokers or received fees for attending seminars and other events organized by the firms, said Du Yongsheng, spokesman for the National Administration for the Protection of State Secrets.

To tackle information corruption has become a new task for China's anti-corruption work, Li Guoxian with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences wrote in his microblog.

Sun Zhen with the NBS was convicted of leaking 27 classified items between June 2009 and January of this year. Wu Chaoming was found guilty for disclosing 25 classified items between January and June 2010.

Neither of them have lodged an appeal.

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