China executed 7 people on Friday for their role in a multi-billion dollar smuggling scandal, the 1st of a big "haul" of executions state media have promised in the biggest corruption case of the Communist era.China's supreme court approved the executions of the 7, including a customs officer and a bank official in Xiamen -- the eastern port at the center of the scandal -- after their appeals were turned down, the official Xinhua news agency said.They were among 14 people, including senior police and customs officials, sentenced to death in November in the 1st verdicts of the scandal believed to have implicated top national and Communist Party officials.Xinhua named the seven who were executed as Wang Jinting, Jie Peigong, Huang Shanying, Zhuang Mingtian, Li Tuzhuan, Wu Yubo and Ye Jichen.Huang had evaded 5.8 billion yuan ($700 million) in taxes by smuggling cigarettes, while Zhuang had dodged 97 million yuan of duties through selling smuggled cigarettes and cars, it said.Wu was a former head of the Dongdu shipping management office in Xiamen and Ye was formerly head of the Xiamen branch of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, it said.But the list did not include the most senior officials sentenced to death in November.Xinhua said police were still investigating evidence provided by Xiamen's former customs chief Yang Qianxian and former vice mayor Lan Pu, and Zhuang Rushun, the former deputy police chief of the eastern province of Fujian.President Jiang Zemin has vowed to stamp out rampant official corruption regardless of rank or relations, and state media have said they expect several high-profile executions from the case surrounding Xiamen's Yuanhua Group.Yuanhua smuggled more than $6 billion worth of cars, luxury goods, oil and raw materials in the early 1990s, paying off city and provincial officials to facilitate and cover up duty evasion, they said.Last year China executed a string of senior government officials for corruption in a campaign against graft which the Communist Party says threatens its grip on power.In September, Cheng Kejie, former Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China's parliament, was executed.The highest-level official executed for corruption since the Communists came to power in 1949, he was condemned for taking bribes worth $5 million when he was government chief of the impoverished southwestern region of Guangxi.