Chinese police resolved 58,000 cases of economic wrongdoing in the first 11 months, recovering 15.69 billion yuan (1.96 billion U.S. dollars), a police officer said Thursday.

The number of cases was up 6 percent from the same period last year, while the sum recovered was up 74.3 percent, said Gao Feng, vice director of the economic crime investigation bureau of the Ministry of Public Security.

Among the cases tackled, 1,276 involved funds raised through fraudulent means. The police were able to recover 1.05 billion yuan (131.62 million dollars).

Chinese police have handled more than 400,000 economic crimes over the past seven years, arresting about 370,000 criminal suspects and recovering 100 billion yuan (12.5 billion dollars).

"China has seen an increasing number of cross-border economic crimes in recent years, especially in fields such as intellectual property infringement and money laundering," said Zheng Shandong, assistant minister of public security, said earlier this month.

This year alone, Chinese police have uncovered seven large underground banks, involving money laundering of more than 14 billion yuan (1.75 billion U.S. dollars).

Economic crimes like pyramid selling and fraud affect large numbers of people in China.

A company in northeast China raised 3 billion yuan (725 million dollars) from gullible members of the public by promising big profits from a project to breed ants.

Donghua Ecological Breeding Co. Ltd., in Liaoning Province, offered returns of 35 to 60 percent on investment in the bogus project.

Gao said police would take more forceful measures to crack down on economic crimes, especially on fund-raising frauds, pyramid selling and the sale of stocks of unlisted companies.

A campaign would be launched in regions where economic crimes are often reported, he said, adding that police would work closely with other government departments on preventing and cracking down on economic crimes and notify them of relevant information. Source: Xinhua