China's auditors have found that more than 30 billion yuan (US$3.75 billion dollars) in public funds was misappropriated or embezzled in the first half of this year, state media reported yesterday.
Auditors said 22.3 billion yuan of the total was used in violation of financial regulations while 9.9 billion yuan was wasted in 184 government units audited, the Xinhua news agency said.
According to the National Audit Office, 252 people were involved in the inappropriate use of the money, Xinhua said. Many of the cases have been forwarded to judicial, discipline inspection and supervisory departments for handling, it said.
For the first 11 months of last year, auditors uncovered 290 billion yuan of illegal spending by government offices, the office had earlier reported.
It did not explain why the figure was so much lower this year or whether all wrongful spending by government offices and state-owned companies was included in this half-year's figure.
Audit office officials meanwhile vowed to strengthen auditing of funds spent on agriculture and rural areas in the second half of the year to ensure the money is better spent.
On July 22 the audit office revealed that 19.2 billion yuan of government funds allotted for supporting agriculture was embezzled and 890 million yuan wasted in 2004 and last year.
Some of the misappropriated funds were for constructing roads, building water conservation projects and repairing rural elementary schools.
Li Jinhua (
The annual audit reports have been open to public scrutiny only since 2003.
Chinese media has criticized the lack of detail about wrongdoing and about how offenders were punished.
Details were not given about corruption cases in the first half of 2006, but previous findings involved officials using public funds to build apartments for employees or give themselves bonuses.
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