Hong Kong  - Corruption cases in Hong Kong fell by 5 per cent in the first 11 months of 2008 despite the city's ailing economy, anti-graft investigators said Tuesday.

However, the former British colony's Independent Commission Against Corruption said it was bracing itself for a new wave of sophisticated financial crime as the global economic crisis deepens.

The commission logged 3,121 reports of corruption in the city of 6.9 million between January and the end of November, compared with 3,278 cases in the same period last year.

Of those cases, 887 involved government departments, two more than in the same period of 2007. Sixty-five per cent of corruption reports in 2008 involved the private sector.

Laura Cha, chairman of the Advisory Committee on Corruption which overseas the work of the commission, said it planned to strengthen investigative training in finance, information technology and computer forensics.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption operates separately from the police and was set up in the 1970s when the Hong Kong police force was embroiled in a number of high-profile corruption cases. (dpa)