A growing number of Party and government officials are expected to
be audited when they leave their current positions within the next
two years, said Li Jinhua, China's top government auditor.
So-called leaving-post auditing "has proven effective in
strengthening the examination and supervision of officials," said
Li, auditor-in-chief of the National Audit Office. "It serves as an
alert for the officials."
Government auditors launched leaving-post auditing, which also
covers bosses of state-owned enterprises, in 1998. The work
garnered much attention because of past complaints that it was
difficult to hold officials responsible for their mistakes after
they left.
Li
said auditors at his office and local subsidiaries reviewed the
economic activities of more than 40,000 officials at all levels
during the past two years.
They included 10 former ministers, vice-ministers and key State
firm executives, he said.
About 1,500 were found problematic. As a result, 500 were removed
from their new posts and 1,000 were forwarded to judicial
departments, he said.
Losses worth 5 billion yuan (US$600 million) were attributed to
officials' poor policy-making and management. Embezzlement of 300
million yuan (US$36 million) was also uncovered.
But no major problems were found in the auditing of ministerial and
vice-ministerial officials, he said.
Despite the findings in leaving-post auditing, the auditors
actually made more headlines in recent years in other aspects of
their work.
They disclosed some major financial malpractice cases, such as the
Ministry of Water
Resources' misuse of funds for water conservancy facilities to
finance construction of its office building; false financial
reports of state-owned enterprises; and some local governments'
misappropriation of funds earmarked for migrant relocation from the
Three Gorges Dam area.
Li
said investigations into particularly bad corruption cases will
remain a mission for government auditors, though auditing of
financial departments' reports on revenue and expenditure in the
government budget has always been its primary task.
But he said government auditors should not be expected to be able
to catch all wrongdoers.
Bribes can be behind some unreasonable policies and arrangements,
but it is usually difficult for the auditors to discern since
financial reports are their sole evidence, he said. Li also said
his office is considering making some of its auditing reports
public to increase transparency.
(China
Daily January 9, 2002)