China’s auditing watchdog revealed that some local authorities have misappropriated funds raised for relocating and aiding Three Gorges migrants, Xinhua news agency reported. In total, 272 million yuan (US$35 million) of the funds was found misused. The national auditing office launched an audit last year, which focused on 10 districts and counties in Hubei Province and Chongqing Municipality. Residents of the 10 counties and districts were relocated in 2004 and 2005 for the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. Local authorities were found misusing the fund to build office buildings, training centers and apartments instead of solving migrants’ working and living problems. Auditors also exposed five embezzlement cases linked to the funds and have handed them over to police. Some of the authorities were found embezzling the money via calculation falsifications, by overestimating the number of migrants, price of construction equipment, materials and cost of engineering projects. After receiving the auditing report, the central government ordered the rectification of the misused funds. By the end of 2006, Hubei and Chongqing retrieved about 83 percent of the misused funds, according to Xinhua. The construction of the Three Gorges Dam Project caused a relocation of residents in 20 districts and counties, among which 11 were impoverished districts. The relocation also caused the bankruptcy and shut down of 63 percent of the local enterprises. The audit uncovered that some migrants couldn’t find jobs or didn’t obtain enough land to farm on. Auditors have suggested that the government invests more money into helping companies develop, land improvement, infrastructure establishment and providing migrants more training courses.