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Haul up officials who 'eat' public money

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-10-30 08:08

Fu Pinghong, former director of township health center in Zhoushan, Zhejiang province, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for misusing public funds. The authorities should now haul up more such criminals, says an article in the Beijing News. Excerpts:

The Zhoushan Intermediate People's Court recently sentenced former director of Gaoting township health center to 11 years in prison after he was found guilty of claiming 440,000 yuan of public fund to pay for his dining and entertainment bills.

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The Criminal Law states that officials who spend public funds on their personal bills should be convicted of corruption, but it has rarely been applied.

The reason is obvious. It has become a kind of "rule" for officials to get drunk at the dining table to decide almost everything.

A member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference has estimated that officials squander up to 200 billion yuan ($29.28 billion) of public money on dinner, entertainment and traveling every year.

Since everybody, including many judicial officials, follow the "rule", it is difficult for an official to sit on judgment over a suspected squanderer.

Judges almost always complain against lack of evidence in "dinner" cases because it is difficult to distinguish the lawful from illegal ones. But is that a good excuse? Each and every head of expense has to be entered in the account books. So why don't prosecutors start their probes with auditing?

Prosecutors should charge more such criminals to launch a crackdown on this unhealthy tendency of officials.

(China Daily 10/30/2009 page9)