AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE in Beijing
Officials yesterday sought to play down reports of embezzlement in the Three Gorges Dam project, saying they related to the resettlement of locals and not to the dam’s construction. The president of the China Three Gorges Project, Lu Youmei, said in a China Daily report that no major embezzlement of construction funds had been discovered. In January, the Auditor-General made a startling revelation that about 12 per cent of the entire budget of resettlement funds had been embezzled in a single year. About 1.13 million people will be relocated to make way for the world’s largest hydro-electric dam. The announcement that US$600 million (HK$4.6 billion) was stolen was the first indication of the scale of corruption circling the vast project. But in the report, Mr Lu said state auditors had not found any serious misuse of funds allocated for construction. "Overall, we have never violated state regulations in using the construction funds and no big embezzlement has been found," he said. The US$27 billion project in central Hubei province has from the start come under intense criticism for uprooting such a large number of people and for the potential damage to the environment. But concerns about corruption started to surface last year when state media revealed that about 100 officials linked to the project had been sanctioned for corruption involving sums of US$1,200 to US$24,000. Mr Lu said embezzlement of funds to help residents relocate had been serious. He said that unlike construction funds, which were managed only by the corporation and checked by various government departments, resettlement funds were distributed to towns and cities where officials pocketed money meant for the residents. But while saying no big embezzlement cases had been discovered in the use of construction funds, Mr Lu did not specify what he meant by "big". Mr Lu’s announcement comes as a string of government officials have been sentenced to death or long prison terms for corruption. They include Chen Kejie, former vice-chairman of the National People’s Congress, who became the highest-ranking government official to be given the death penalty.