A senior official in charge of China's food quality control jumped to his death from a building in Beijing after anti-graft investigators started looking into his affairs, state media said.
Wu Jianping, 42, had headed food production supervision at the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) since the unit was set up in November 2005, the Caijing magazine reported Tuesday.
Beijing prosecutors met with Wu on August 1, one day before his death, to investigate reports claiming he had "economic problems," Caijing said, citing unnamed "authoritative sources."
"Economic problems" is a widely used euphemism for corruption in Chinese media.
Wu, whose department has the power to issue licences to Chinese food producers, admitted to investigators that he had property and millions of yuan in deposits that were out of proportion to his income, it added.
China in 2001 introduced the licensing system to address the increasingly acute food safety problem.
Currently less than a quarter of the country's 450,000 food production companies have the licence, Caijing said.
Beijing has been trying to improve the reputation of sectors such as the food and drug industries after scandals surrounding exports of anything from toxic seafood to fake medicine made headlines both at home and abroad.
The former head of the State Food and Drug Administration, Zheng Xiaoyu, was executed last year after being convicted of taking bribes in return for approving hundreds of medicine products, some later proving dangerous.
The AQSIQ was not immediately available for comments when contacted yesterday.