Authorities in China are pioneering the use of large sums of money as an award for people reporting official corruption and other white collar crime.

The commission scheme introduced in Hunan province will give whistleblowers 10 percent of the funds that are recovered by the government as a result of the information they provide which lead to a successful prosecution. The awards will be capped at 100,000 yuan, (US$14,600). With approval from provincial authorities that cap can be raised to 200,000 yuan, or be removed altogether, the report in the Wall Street Journal said.

The identity of informants will be kept confidential, and civil or criminal penalties may be imposed for retaliatory actions, the report said.

An Hunan province official said that its procuratorate, a department which investigates and prosecutes cases on the behalf of the government, had received over 5,300 corruption reports. Last year, Hunan officials probed 1,615 individuals, and recovered 359 million yuan (US$52.5 million), the report said.

Concurrently, a new hotline launched in China to make it easier for people to report malfeasance has been swamped on its first day of operation, according to a media report.

According to a report in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, the hotline is currently available in 18 of the 31 provinces and autonomous regions. It will be fully set up in all parts of China within six months, the newspaper reported, citing a spokesman for the Supreme People’s Procuratorate.

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Hong Kong's graft-busting ICAC convicted 87 percent of corruption cases that it pursued last year, according to recently released statistics.

Last year, Hong Kong’s anti-corruption enforcement agency said the number of reports dropped six percent to 3,377. Private sector cases comprised 65 percent of the complaints, with 28 per cent concerning government departments, and the remainder directed at public bodies, according to its recently published annual report.

It noted that last year a record 75 percent of reports lodged were made by people who identified themselves – as opposed to anonymous reports.

The ICAC Commissioner Timothy Tong Hin-ming wrote in the report that the graft-buster is aware of the increasingly complex cases that may arise as a result of the global financial downturn. The commission has therefore stepped up the training of its staff in financial investigation, and computer forensics, as well as boosted the resources available to investigate corruption in the private sector.

These include a series of seminars that conducted last year to improve the knowledge of investigators of the global and local financial system, and the regulatory system.

Last year, the ICAC’s Financial Investigation Section probed 7,095 financial transactions in 168 cases, involving a total sum of HK$4.4 billion. Its Computer Forensics Section carried out 502 computer data analysis, in relation to 111 operations and seized a total of 368 computers.

Of all of the graft reports received last year, building management industry represented 43 percent, with 943 cases. The commissioner noted that the sector will remain a priority for the ICAC in the near term.

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