ap.google.com | 8/28/08 | Tini Tran
BEIJING (AP) — Chinese government auditors have uncovered the misuse of millions of dollars in disaster assistance as part of an embezzlement probe spanning 10 central government departments, state media reported Thursday.
A total of $3.7 million in disaster relief funds were diverted to construct government buildings or spent on administration last year, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
China is trying to rebuild from a 7.9-magnitude quake that struck Sichuan province on May 12, killing nearly 70,000 people and leaving 5 million homeless.
Beijing has in recent years sought to tighten government budgets to rein in spending and eliminate waste while boosting assistance for victims of floods, earthquakes and other disasters. Such emergency funds are not always carefully accounted for, making them susceptible to misuse or embezzlement.
The corruption was relatively minor, however, given the total of 4.52 billion yuan ($660 million) in abused funds Xinhua said was cited in Auditor-General Liu Jiayi's annual report to the National People's Congress, China's rubber stamp parliament. Liu said 117 cases of official embezzlement were uncovered in 2007, and 14 top officials detained.
A total of 88 people were arrested, prosecuted or sentenced, and another 104 people were given administrative punishments over the violations, the official China Daily newspaper said in a separate report Thursday.
China's ruling Communist Party calls corruption a major threat to social stability and a serious challenge to its continuing grip on power. China's leadership has attempted to reign in graft through periodic anti-corruption crackdowns, though it has balked at subjecting party officials to outside supervision.
The 10 agencies audited included the education and commerce ministries, the National Bureau of Statistics, State Administration of Taxation, and the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television.
After auditing the 2007 state budget spending, expenditures of 29.38 billion yuan ($4.32 billion) were found to be "problematic" at the ministerial level, Liu said, according to Xinhua. The problems included falsifying budget accounts, fund appropriation and embezzlement, underreporting revenues and over-reporting expenditures.
The office also noted "managerial irregularities" in the handling of 41.7 billion yuan ($6.09 billion) of government funds, China Daily said.
Audits in 2006 found 7 billion yuan ($1.02 billion) in misused funds, though more than half of the funding was retrieved later, the paper said. In 2005, misused funds amounted to 5.51 billion yuan ($805.73 million).
Investigations into land use fees in 11 major cities, including Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai last year showed 8.4 billion yuan ($1.22 billion) had been misused.
Auditors in 133 cities found that 2 billion yuan ($292.4 million) was misappropriated from housing funds and another 2.2 billion yuan ($321.7 million) had been loaned out improperly.
An audit of nine major financial institutions, including the Agricultural Bank of China, showed 14.2 billion yuan ($2.07 billion) was used illegally, the report said, and 140 suspects from those institutions were turned over to judicial departments.
Last December, a Web site started by China's new anti-corruption bureau crashed after barely a day because too many visitors tried to log on to register complaints. Nearly 2,000 local government officials were either disciplined or charged with crimes last year, Xinhua reported in late December, citing the Communist Party's organization department.
