South China Morning Post
June 5, 2006
In a fresh example of corruption plaguing the massive Three Gorges Dam project, a senior official suspected of having siphoned off more than one billion yuan (HK$930 million) of state funds into overseas bank accounts has gone missing. Staff at the Three Gorges Economic Development Corporation, a subsidiary of the Three Gorges Project Construction Committee, say they have not been paid for 11 months. The man who has gone missing is manager Jin Wenchao, who they say spent six years selling official posts and embezzling money borrowed from state banks and investment funds. Jin was detained by Beijing police last year but was later released and has since disappeared. His son Jin Jiyuan is under investigation by authorities in Zhengzhou. The case, details of which are disclosed in today’s South China Morning Post, follows a report by state auditors which revealed 470 million yuan was stolen last year. Since then more than 100 officials have been punished. However, critics of the project say corruption on a far greater scale has taken place. Dai Lansheng, a top executive at the Three Gorges Industrial Company, which has carried out two-thirds of the dam construction, was charged in January with embezzling billions of yuan by importing hundreds of used lorries, bulldozers, excavators and loading vehicles instead of new ones. From 1994 on, Dai allegedly imported a billion yuan’s worth of these products from the United States through a Hong Kong dealer.