China: 12 officials sacked for quake fraud

Two officials in Xixiang county, Shaanxi province, are being detained and interrogated for giving victims of the May 12 Sichuan quake less than their allotted measure of relief grain, local authorities have said.

The grain given to the quake victims was also reportedly stale.

"The initial investigation has shown that the two officials - Wang Anwu, director of the county's grain bureau; and Zhang Miyou, chief of the bureau's macro business section - were responsible for giving out grain that was stale and that was less than the allocated amount when sending out relief food supplies to local disaster-hit people," Li Qiyan, director of the Xixiang county supervision bureau, told China Daily on Friday.

On June 13, a posting on the Internet said that residents in the county had received inadequate amounts of relief grain that was mixed with stale supplies.

The local authorities carried out the investigations into the matter soon after.

Ten other counties in the area have complained their aid packages are also lighter than they were supposed to be.

In Shanghai, authorities allege a branch manager of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China spent more than $4,000 worth of donations to buy his staff 56 pairs of Nike running shoes, then falsified the invoices to make it appear the bank had purchased rain gear and clothing for earthquake victims.

Supervision Minister Ma Wen, a top anti-corruption official, said Monday that 12 people have been fired for dereliction of duty and the misuse of earthquake relief supplies.

Ma told a news conference in Beijing that her department has received 1,178 complaints involving the response to the quake and so far has dealt with 1,000 of them.

Administrative punishments have been handed out to 43 officials, the most serious being removal from office, Ma said.

China's Premier Wen Jiabao has called for the country's battered earthquake zone to be rebuilt within two years. Schools and other buildings must meet the highest safety standards.

Chinese state media quoted Wen as saying the country's leadership is urging governments in Sichuan and other affected provinces to push the reconstruction effort into a higher gear.

May 29 (Xinhua) -- Chinese authorities published a special statute Thursday that provides for punishment of malpractice and fraud involving relief for the May 12 earthquake in southwest China.
 The two departments ordered their local counterparts at various levels to make the anti-earthquake battle a primary task and to investigate and punish wrongdoing without hesitation. 

  The regulation prohibits embezzlement and fraud in the distribution of relief, the trading of relief goods, and other official malfeasance. 

  Institutions and individuals, leading officials in particular, who are found to have engaged in such activities will be severely punished by the Communist Party and the government. 

  Those who broke the law will have their cases referred to judicial departments for prosecution, it said.