BEIJING - The number of commercial bribe cases dealt with by Chinese courts rose to 4,406 in the first seven months, an increase of 8.2 percent over the same period of last year, according to the Supreme People's Court (SPC) on Saturday.

Xiong Xuanguo, vice-president of the SPC, said the number of cases featuring corporate wrong-doings rose 37.3 percent and cases relating to individual employees of companies jumped by 52.1 percent.

Of the 3,748 commercial bribery cases that have been closed this year, 94.1 percent involved civil servants, Xiong said.

A total of 31,119 commercial bribery cases were dealt with in China in the past two years before August 2007, with 7.079 billion yuan (US$942.51 million) involved, said Li Yufu, deputy director of the leading group on anti-commercial bribery under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.