Nearly 10,000 people in China's rural areas were prosecuted last year for graft and bribery, the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) said Thursday.

Prosecutors across the country investigated 11,712 people in rural areas for abuse of power in 2008, of whom 9,496, or 81.1 percent, were involved in corruption and bribery, the SPP said.

Some 42.4 percent of those investigated were heads of grassroots organizations such as villagers' committees and party chiefs in villages, it said.

(Xinhua News Agency April 16, 2009)