Six senior officials from the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) have been taken into custody accused of taking bribes.

According to a report of Wednesday's China Daily, Beijing's Xicheng District People's Procuratorate is questioning Cao Wenzhuang, 44, director of the Department of Drug Registration of SFDA, and a number of other administration officials.

All six suspects were arrested on Jan. 12 at an annual conference of the national food and drug administration in a northern suburb of Beijing, the newspaper said.

It is not yet clear what sums of money are involved, as the cases are still under investigation.

Insiders say the arrests follow the detention of a private businessman who is suspected of offering bribes to drug administration officials. The businessman has not been identified as investigations are ongoing.

This is the second time senior SFDA officials have been arrested since Hao Heping, former director of the Department of Medical Devices, was detained last June accused of taking bribes.

Though there are a series of pharmaceutical enterprises involved in Hao's case, sources say the Cao investigation could be even more complicated.

Mismanagement in the testing and approval of new drugs has been cited as one of the major factors that has led to skyrocketing prices of medicines and huge profits in recent years, experts say.

The SFDA dealt with 10,009 new drugs in 2004, while just 148 medicines were approved in the United States.

In the first 11 months of 2005, China handled 258,700 medicine-related cases involving drugs worth 430 million yuan (53.75 million U.S. dollars).

Source: Xinhua