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More Chinese Ministers to Come Under Gaze of Auditors
More Chinese ministers will be audited this year by the National Audit Office to more effectively curb corruption.
"Our aim is to provide a reference to our cadre appointment work by telling whether a person can be appointed," Auditor-General Li Jinhua was quoted as saying by Sunday's Business Weekly.
The economic duty audit focuses on three aspects: whether the official has properly fulfilled his or her economic duties; whether he or she has caused losses by violating financial regulations; and whether he or she has broken any law.
Li said that many financial problems could be avoid if officials properly used their power and carefully fulfill their duties.
China introduced the economic duty auditing system in 1998 in an effort to curb rampant corruption and losses of State assets due to negligence.
The system was first practiced among officials at or below the county level. Nearly 85 percent of the nation's counties had launched the auditing of Party and government officials. And nearly 84 percent of the counties had implemented such auditing of State-owned enterprise leaders.
Auditing was expanded to the officials above the county level and even at the ministry level this year. The National Audit Office has audited the leaders of six major financial institutions including the four State-owned banks: Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, and Agricultural Bank of China.
Li said that the results have been submitted to the State Council, declining to reveal any further information.
Leaders from one or two provinces and one or two State Council departments will be audited.
"We expect to launch the auditing on all government and Party leaders of above county level by 2002," Li said.
A total of 42,000 Party and government leaders, and 15,000 enterprises leaders have been audited since 1998. Among them 200 were deprived of post, 470 were admonished or punished, and 1,010 were transferred to legal departments. And 3,300 officials have been promoted thanks to the audit results, said Li.
Individual behavior concerning a total of 590 million yuan (about t71 million U.S. dollars) has been ferreted out and violations by enterprises concerning a total of 96.17 billion yuan (nearly 11.6 billion U.S. dollars) have been exposed, Li said.
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