With the country's most corrupt official Chen Tonghai, former top leader of China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation, getting the death sentence with a two-year reprieve for receiving about 200 million yuan ($29 million) in bribes, the focus in the case has now shifted to the question of why any of the five offenders allegedly involved in bribery are still at large.

It is reported that the court held their illegal act, carried out on behalf of their organizations, as personal conduct. But they showed up in court as witnesses rather than as those implicated in bribery.

In this case involving the largest sum of money ever paid in bribes in the history of the People's Republic, it is strange that there is no mention of those who paid bribes. It should not have been difficult for the police to sort this out in a case where investigations went on for almost two years.