Eight officials with the Jilin provincial coal bureau, including bureau chief Zhao Quanzhou, have been issued Party and administrative penalties for using public funds for leisure trips overseas.

Fifty-one high-ranking and mid-level officials from the bureau were organized into nine groups for travel abroad under the guise of business trips from 2007 to 2009, State broadcaster CCTV reported.

"The Party leadership group deliberately organized trips abroad using public funds beginning in 2007. Zhao even mentioned the trips in a Party group meeting," said Guo Songjiang, an official with the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention under the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI).

The trips were reported to have been solely for sightseeing and no work was done.

In one instance, Yuan Yuqing, former deputy chief of the bureau, submitted a "work report" after he returned from a sightseeing tour of Brazil and Argentina as the leader of a 15-member delegation. The tour took place just after the 8.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated Wenchuan in Sichuan province on May 12, 2008.

Yuan's trip was reportedly funded by 1.19 million yuan ($174,335) of public money.

Similarly, Li Yanfang, deputy director of the bureau's scientific equipment department, took a 17-day trip to the United States and Canada with a delegation last year. Li made the trip under the guise of "exchanging ideas and inspections", according to media reports. The perpetrators fabricated invitation letters and extended their stay abroad without approval.

The bureau officials also asked the Shulan Mining Group, one of its subordinate enterprises, to cover travel costs of about 300,000 yuan.