Some of China’s biggest state firms were found to have falsified revenue and profits, while some state lenders doled out loans to unqualified borrowers, the nation’s auditor said amid an intensifying crackdown on corruption.
Fourteen state-owned firms, including State Grid Corp (國家電網), COSCO Group (中國海運集團) and China Southern Power Grid Co (中國南方電網), falsified 29.8 billion yuan (US$4.8 billion) in revenue and 19.4 billion yuan in profits, the National Audit Office said in a statement on its Web site on Sunday.
The office on Sunday issued its work report for last year, along with several statements and audit reports for individual companies.
A key focus of the National Audit Office’s work last year was revealing violations in the approval, allocation and management of public funds, state-owned assets and resources, the office said in the statement. The comments come amid an anti-graft campaign by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — who calls corruption a threat to the Communist Party’s survival — that has snared about 100,000 officials in the past two years.
Inadequate due diligence and violations in decisionmaking procedures had cost the firms as much as 1.64 billion yuan in wasted resources and 35.4 billion yuan in “losses or idle assets,” the auditor said.
The statement said 4 billion yuan had been recouped from the state-owned firms and more than 250 people had been penalized.
The audit office handed more than 56 serious cases to “relevant departments,” it said.
Violations were also found in the nation’s financial industry, it said. About 16.8 billion yuan in loans from Bank of Communications Co (交通銀行), China Development Bank Corp (國家開發銀行) and China Export & Credit Insurance Corp (中國出口信用保險) were found to have violated rules.
China Development Bank, a policy lender, broke rules on 13 billion yuan of loans it disbursed since 2005, while Bank of Communications, China’s fifth-largest lender by market cap, was found to have given out 3.8 billion yuan of loans to unqualified projects and companies between 2008 and last year, the auditor said.
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