Billions of yuan misused or mismanaged: audit

An annual audit of government spending has revealed that central departments and their subordinate units have misused or mismanaged close to 50 billion yuan in 2007, China Daily reports.

Liu Jiayi, who heads the National Audit Office (NAO), said in his annual report to the legislature on Wednesday that about 4.52 billion yuan (447.9 million euros) was misused last year, leading to the arrest of 14 officials.

An audit of 53 government departments showed that 588 million yuan (58.2 million euros) have been misused, while a similar audit of 368 subordinate units revealed the misuse of 3.93 billion yuan (389.25 billion euros).

Violators included the education and commerce ministries, the National Bureau of Statistics, State Administration of Taxation and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.

NAO auditors also found that 41.7 billion yuan (4.1 billion euros) have been mismanaged by the departments and their subordinate units. Liu also said that another 171 million yuan (16.9 million euros) have been wasted.

The amount of misused funds has dropped from 5.51 billion yuan (545 million euros) in 2005 and 7 billion yuan (693 million euros) in 2006. The China Daily report says that about 4.2 billion yuan (416 million euros) have been recovered.

City-level audits nationwide showed the same pattern of misused or “problematic” funds.