Two senior judicial officials in Chongqing have been arrested for taking "huge amounts of bribes" in the midst of a widening corruption scandal in the southwestern city, a municipal spokesman said yesterday.

Zhang Tao, deputy chief justice of the Chongqing higher people's court, and Wu Xiaoqing, former director of the court's enforcement bureau, were reportedly put under shuanggui in June, a procedure in which a Communist Party of China (CPC) member is asked to confess to wrongdoings before a CPC discipline inspection commission.

"Their grafts have been handed over to judicial authorities," Chongqing municipal spokesman Wen Tianping said at a press conference.