China executes seven in corruption scandal

China has executed seven people for their role in the country's largest ever corruption scandal.

The official news agency said that those executed include a man who evaded seven-million dollars in taxes by smuggling cigarettes.

The list does not include the most senior figures among the fourteen people sentenced to death in November in the first verdicts over the scandal.

The case centres on the Yuanhua group, which smuggled cars, luxury goods, cigarettes and oil into Xiamen city in the southeastern province of Fujian, cheating the state of about four billion dollars and bribing a network of government and party officials to keep quiet. The alleged mastermind of the scheme, Lai Changxing, has been arrested in Canada and is fighting a request for his extradition.

President Jiang Zemin has vowed to stamp out corruption, but correspondents say that revelations about the case threaten to undermine the credibility of the Communist party.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service