Mayor and Party chief of Shanghai yesterday ordered to punish lawbreaking entrepreneurs with severity, Eastday.com reported.

Han Zheng, the acting secretary of the Communist Party of China of Shanghai, said at a finance and taxation conference that "lawless people" and entrepreneurs like Zhou Zhengyi shall be punished severely, the city's official news portal Website reported. 

Zhou, also known as Chau Ching-ngai in Hong Kong, was a former property and securities tycoon but has recently been linked to the city's pension fund scandal and a series of economic crimes.

Han said lawless people not only disturb market order, but they also disrupt social order.

Han ordered judicial authorities and its staff members to not be softhearted in the fulfillment of their duties.

Han said Zhou was suspicious of falsifying value added tax invoices. According to Chinese law, these charges fall under felonies and violators could face the death penalty.

He was also involved in bribing officials with large sums of money, Han added.

Han also stated that the whole legal process should be transparent and information should be released to society at the right time.

Zhou was arrested on Sunday after prosecutors found evidence linking him to the city's pension fund scandal, Shanghai People's Procuratorate said on Monday.

Zhou, 46, was convicted by the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People's Court in June 2004 for falsifying registered capital reports and for share price manipulation. The former president of Shanghai-based Nongkai Development Group was sentenced to three years imprisonment but was given credit for his time already served.

Zhou is still wanted by Hong Kong's Independent Commission Against Corruption, which accuses him of rigging stock prices when he controlled the then Hong Kong-listed Shanghai Land Holdings Ltd, a subsidiary of Nongkai.

Shanghai kicked off an anti-corruption campaign in August with investigations into the misuse of the city's pension fund, which has already implicated many government officials and company executives, with former Shanghai Party Secretary Chen Liangyu dismissed in September.

(Shanghai Daily January 25, 2007)