BEIJING, April 15 (Xinhua) -- China has launched a nationwide campaign to crack down on fraud as it has seen a fast growth of swindling cases, the Ministry of Public Security said.

The operation, codenamed "Cloud Sword 2020," focuses on combating fraudulent acts, in particular telecom scams, and tackling unsolved homicide cases.

Describing the crackdown as a major task for 2020, Du Hangwei, vice minister of public security, urged police across the country to curb the growing momentum of telecom fraud and crack accumulated criminal cases by using new technologies.

In 2019, Chinese police cracked about 200,000 cases of telecom fraud and captured around 160,000 suspects, marking a year-on-year increase of 52.7 percent and 123.3 percent, respectively, the ministry said.

Also last year, police seized about 51,000 suspects in 5,320 cases for offering fraudulent loans and 11,000 in 620 groups for scams under the pretext of "unfreezing national assets."

Remarkable progress was made in hunting down fugitives, the ministry noted, adding 469,000 suspects at large were captured in 2019, including 139 on the ministry's class-A wanted list.

In light of emerging changes in criminal cases amid the COVID-19 epidemic, Du demanded efforts to fight against illegal activities related to the epidemic.

According to statistics released by the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP), 2,305 people in 1,883 cases had been prosecuted in China over criminal offenses related to the COVID-19 epidemic.

Among them, 25 people were indicted for impairing infectious disease prevention, 556 for obstructing official duties, 162 for manufacturing or selling fake or inferior products such as substandard drugs or medical equipment, 21 for engaging in illegal business operations including price gouging and 330 for damaging wildlife resources such as hunting illegally, killing or selling precious or endangered wild animals and their byproducts, the SPP said.