BEIJING - Police in the Chinese city of Chongqing have detained more than 100 gangsters in a sweep to crush 14 criminal enterprises that reportedly included three millionaires and had ties to the government, state media said Friday.
Police detained the gangsters, including 19 ringleaders, during a nearly two-month long operation that focused on criminals who had plagued Chongqing for years, city government spokesman Zhou Bo told a news conference, according to a transcript posted online Friday by a local newspaper.
"During the campaign to target gangs, the city's public security bureau caught a group of criminal suspects, confiscated a number of guns and knifes, and froze a large number of bank accounts involved in the cases," he said.
The news office of the city government said it did not have any information apart from the online transcript of Thursday's news conference.
The municipality has experienced a wave of crime since the 1990s, with gangs involved in illegal casinos, loan sharking and extortion, according to financial magazine Caijing.
Of the 19 ringleaders, Caijing said three were particularly influential in the city and were millionaires. One, Li Qiang is a representative of the city's People's Congress, a government body, and another, Chen Mingliang, is a district People's Congress representative.
Many had protection from the judiciary or from inside the police, the magazine said.
Bo Xilai, a member of the ruling Communist Party's powerful Politburo, has promised to clean up the city since being appointed its top official in late 2007.
As part of the campaign, Wen Qiang, the previous deputy director of the city's police -- a post he held for 16 years until last year -- was detained in an internal investigation, Zhou said.
China's Communist Party can detain officials for internal investigation before turning them over to judicial authorities.
Xinhua reported last week that more than 3,000 gangsters involved in mafia-style crimes had been convicted over the last 3-1/2 years around the country. They were jailed for at least 5 years or in some cases executed.
It quoted Zhang Jun, vice-president of the Supreme People's Court, calling for increased efforts to crack down on gangs and to crush "protective umbrellas" of government officials behind them.
