Supervision officials connected with the massive Three Gorges
Dam project have announced that a total of 349 people have been
involved in 310 cases of misuse of resettlement funds since
construction of the world's largest hydropower station began in
1994.
"By the end of 2003, about 58.7 million yuan (US$7.1 million) in
resettlement funds, or 0.1 percent of the total budget for
relocating the 1.3 million people who had to make way for the
project, was embezzled, misappropriated or illegally used," a
supervision official said.
He stated that 43.0 million yuan (US$5.2 million) of the money
had been recovered, and all of the embezzlers, including 166
officials, have been severely punished.
"All investment has been well controlled, with resettlement
funds operated safely and effectively," Pu Haiqing,?minister
of the Three Gorges Project Construction Committee Executive
Office, confirmed in his latest report released on Monday. The
committee's Executive Office is answerable directly to the State
Council.
Xia Kailiang, deputy director of the Executive Office's
supervision department, said last weekend that all accused
officials have been convicted and punished.
The biggest case thus far was that of Huang Faxiang, the former
head of the Fengdu County Land Resources Bureau, who embezzled 12.0
million yuan (US$1.4 million) from land sales. Huang was sentenced
to death and executed.
Wang Sumei, an accountant at the Wanzhou District Relocation
Bureau in Chongqing
Municipality, received a life sentence for using more than 1
million yuan (US$120,000) of resettlement funds for gambling.
This is the first time that the Three Gorges supervision
department -- an internal watchdog set up to scrutinize the
project's budget -- has revealed details of fund scandals.
Embezzlers took the greatest amount of money, with 97
individuals involved in stealing about 17 million yuan (US$2.1
million). Bribery was more widespread, with 192 people involved in
12 million yuan (US$1.4 million) worth of bribes.
Another 24 were charged with malfeasance involving approximately
17 million yuan (US$2.1 million).
However, according to the latest report from Xia's office,
"resettlement is proceeding smoothly with intensified auditing and
supervision systems put into operation over the past decade."
Xia said that the government has established management and
supervision systems to strengthen oversight of the project's
construction funds. However, he admitted, "the huge amount had to
be appropriated from the central government to local governments
level by level, thus leaving opportunities for embezzlers."
"Most cases of embezzling public funds took place at the
grass-roots level, in units spending the money, or by officials
responsible for it," Xia said.
State-level auditors were sent to units responsible for
resettlement to purge any officials guilty of corruption after
several major cases of embezzlement were reported.
As control over the disbursement of funds was ratcheted up,
senior central government officials warned local officials not to
lay a finger on the money for any other purpose other than
resettlement.
Information leaflets were also distributed to locals to tell
them about official compensation procedures and how much money they
could get for their flooded land and housing.
Xia reported that as a result of improved monitoring, the annual
number of cases of embezzling resettlement funds fell from 43 in
1995 to 15 in 2003.
By 2009, a total of 1.1 million people will have been displaced
by the Three Gorges project.
So far, more than 965,500 have been removed from the reservoir
area, which stretches some 600 kilometers from Yichang in Hubei
Province to Chongqing Municipality. More than 34 million square
meters of housing has been completed for the displaced people.
About 166,000 former residents of the Yangtze riverbank area
have been moved to over 1,000 towns in 11 other provinces to
"ensure a better environment in the reservoir area."
About 1,400 factories along the Yangtze River were also moved or
shut down.
By the end of last year, 51.9 billion yuan (US$6.2 billion) had
been pumped into the Three Gorges Dam and hydropower station, while
43.0 billion yuan (US$5.1 billion) was spent resettling residents
from the reservoir area.
(China Daily March 29, 2005)