Beijing — An official audit has revealed a litany of abuses in Chinese government departments, including rampant stock speculation, the establishment of illegal companies and the purchase of Buicks and Volkswagens on the sly.
The findings were contained in an annual report by the National Audit office that was published by state media Thursday.
While the report is issued every year, the 2005 edition detailed abuses dating back a decade.
Corruption is rampant in China, and for years the central government has vowed to do more to stamp it out.
Recent steps include the jailing of officials for embezzling funds, building illegal apartment buildings and using sub-par materials to construct faulty public works projects.
President Hu Jintao and other top Chinese leaders have repeatedly warned that rising public anger at government graft could threaten the Communist Party's hold on power.
This year's audit of 32 government departments found irregularities in 31 of them, the National Audit Office said in findings released by the government's Xinhua News Agency and reprinted in state newspapers.
Reported violators included the Ministry of Science and Technology, which diverted $3.2-illion (U.S.) of government money to set up an illegal company in 1997; the Health Ministry, which took $235,000 earmarked for the evaluation of medical products and used it to purchase six Volkswagen cars and a Buick minivan; and the State Goods and Materials Bureau, which plowed $9.4-million into the stock market in 1995, despite explicit prohibitions against the practice.
The report didn't give a total figure for abuses uncovered by the audit but some of the transactions —like the Reform and Development Commission's sanctioning of $160 million worth of duplicate spending in provincial engineering projects — underscored the gravity of the audit agency's findings.
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