Authorities in Qingdao, Shandong province, have set up a joint investigation team to probe an illegal expansion of a public cemetery.

The move comes following a report from China National Radio, which said that the Taipingling cemetery in the city's Chengyang district has been expanded beyond its approved area.

The local civil affairs department approved the nearly 6-hectare cemetery in 1996. Satellite remote sensing shows, however, that the cemetery's operator has dug into mountains and cleared forests in protected spaces of the Laoshan scenic area to build more graves for years.

In an interview with CNR, Zhang Min, deputy head of the Chengyang government, said a thorough investigation is necessary to learn more details about the violations.

A preliminary probe shows that about 10,000 grave sites have been set up in the cemetery, and about 7,000 have been sold, he said.

Local authorities have not disclosed how many of the sold graves were built illegally, but said sales of all grave sites in the expansion area have been suspended. Moreover, the illegal grave sites will be destroyed, and the areas they occupy will be restored.

According to CNR, the cemetery was previously a cooperative business run by villagers of the Huayin residential compound. In 2001, Qingdao Taipingshan Public Service Co was established to run the cemetery.

According to corporate data provider Qichacha, the majority stakeholder of the company is Yang Shihui, head of the Huayin neighborhood committee. Yang holds 51 percent of the company's shares, while the committee holds the remainder.

According to media reports, Taipingshan was fined over 9 million yuan ($1.2 million) by Chengyang's department of natural resources for committing three violations late last year.

Two of the violations concerned illegal land occupation, while the other pertained to improper use of forestland.

According to CNR, graves in the cemetery were sold at prices ranging from almost 90,000 yuan to 718,000 yuan.

Li Baolu, deputy head of the Qingdao public security bureau's forest police squad, said the joint investigation team will conduct a thorough probe into the case to see whether there are criminal offenses.

Local police will severely crack down on any crimes that may have been perpetrated by the company, "with zero tolerance" for violations, he stressed.