KUNMING - The leader and two core members of a Mafia-style gang that terrorized local communities in southwest China's city of Kunming were executed Tuesday, court officials said.

Gang leader Jiang Jiatian, his mistress Yang Jufen and Xie Mingxiang were executed after the Supreme People's Court approved their sentences, said Ma Yukun, vice-president of the Kunming Intermediate People's Court.

Jiang, 58, made a fortune from drug trafficking in the mid-1990s and invested his earnings in at least 10 teahouses, Internet cafes and hotels in Kunming. He organized a gang of 41 members and nearly all of his businesses were used as dens for prostitution, extortion, racketeering, and the sale of drugs and counterfeit banknotes, Ma said.

The gang disrupted social order in at least three villages in the suburbs of Kunming and many villagers wrote to local governments complaining that they felt unsafe, court officials previously said.

Jiang and other core gang members were sentenced to death by the Kunming local court in 2009, but the father of Jiang's mistress won a two-year stay of his execution after appealing.

China has been cracking down on Mafia-style gangs over the past few years. The most notable achievements have been made in southwest China's Chongqing municipality, with the takedown of a powerful judicial official who was found to be protecting multiple gangs.

Wen Qiang, 55, former director of the Chongqing Municipal Judicial Bureau, was executed in July 2010 on graft and gang-related charges.