South China Morning Post
June 5, 2006
"I have abandoned all hope," wrote a deputy director of the Three Gorges Economic Development Corporation in the suicide note he left behind when he killed himself on February 22. "There is no way out for me. I need money for medical fees but, since August 1999, I have not been paid." For eight years, officials like the late Song Yonghui lived high on the hog, borrowing and spending billions of yuan in the name of the China’s most prestigious project. Then last year the money ran out. Creditors began closing in on the company’s autocratic boss, 67-year-old Jin Wenchao, who has disappeared leaving a mountain of debts and thousands of angry and unpaid employees. Song realised the company would never have the money to pay the huge medical bills he had run up being treated for a kidney disease. "We appeal to the higher authorities to send a team to investigate the corruption and reconstruct the company," wrote other desperate staff members in a petition sent last month. One former employee said: "No one knows how much money Jin Wenchao stole – at least one billion yuan [about HK$930 million], maybe more. Most was sent abroad. We think he transferred a bank loan of at least US$9 million [about HK$69 million] to the United States." Speaking on the condition of anonymity, staff members of the now defunct company, which once had 160 branch companies and 2,600 employees, 500 in Beijing alone, revealed a gigantic scam run by an individual with connections right up to the Politburo.