Party General Secretary and State President Nguyen Phu Trong speaks at the meeting.

Speaking at a meeting of the Central Steering Committee on Corruption Prevention and Control in Hanoi, the top leader stressed that speeding up the combat against corruption is urgently needed as it reflects aspirations of both people and the Party.

Inspections and audits must be transparent, he said, emphasizing the need to complete the settlement of pending cases, deal with shortcomings and pay more attention to key areas.

Trong, who is also head of the committee, touched upon the upcoming all-level Party congresses and noted that those showing signs of corruption and degradation in political ideology and morality should not be included in the contingent of Party committee members.

The key anti-corruption tasks in the next phase cover land, money laundering, investment, personnel work and equitisation of State-owned enterprises, he said, asserting the central task is preparations for the all-level Party congresses.

The leader lauded better coordination and high consensus between concerned agencies as well as the performance of the committee, which, he said, has devised orientations for the work.

He, however, pointed out limitations in the combat regarding appraisal and the poor performance of some localities, and asked the committee to keep a closer watch on anti-corruption in the localities.

In the first six months of this year, localities launched legal proceedings against 176 corrupt cases with 425 people involved, up 13.5 percent in cases and 32.8 percent in the number of the involved year-on-year.

Since the beginning of this year, all-level Party committees and inspection committees issued disciplinary measures against 123 Party organisations and 7,923 Party members, of whom 256 involved in corruption, or 21 more than the same period in 2018.

Inspection and audit agencies proposed reclaiming and settling over 61.39 trillion VND (2.63 billion USD) and 142 hectares of land, and imposing administrative fines on 692 collectives and many individuals.

In the remaining six months, the committee required that “petty” corruption must be dealt with efficiently and investigations into 28 cases should be wrapped up, among others.-VNA