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dam-l AFP Mar 10, 2000 "Official sentenced to death for 3G Corruption"
http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=141680
Chinese Official Sentenced To Death For Three Gorges Corruption
BEIJING, Mar 10, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) China has sentenced to death an
official who embezzled nearly 1.5 million dollars from the controversial Three
Gorges dam project, a court official told AFP Friday.
The former director of the district construction bureau in Fengdu received the
death sentence on February 25 for stealing 12 million yuan (1.44 million
dollars), a court spokesman in southwestern Chongqing city said.
Reports of massive graft have swirled around the construction of the world's
biggest hydroelectric dam on the Yangtze River since it began in 1994, but this
is the first death penalty handed down.
China's auditor general said in January that around 600 million dollars
earmarked for the resettlement of those made homeless by the project had been
embezzled, 12 percent of the entire relocation budget.
The official press on Friday, however, revised the embezzled figure down to 7.4
percent of the relocation budget.
The Chongqing court spokesman also revealed that an official from the migration
bureau in Wanzhou district near the city was jailed for life in May last year
for corruption.
Wang Sumei was convicted of taking money from the bureau and losing it in
extravagant mahjong gambling parties between September 1997 and December 1998.
State press described Wang as a compulsive gambler who continued to mount up
debts in an effort to win back her losses. She regularly took between 60,000 to
200,000 yuan from the relocation fund which she had complete access to.
Some 1.3 million people are expected to be relocated from the banks of the
Yangtze River to make way for the 632 square kilometer (252 square mile)
reservoir which will be created upon the completion of the Three Gorges Dam.
Officials told AFP in January that criminal proceedings had been started
against 14 officials involved in dam corruption and that others were still
being investigated.
The National Audit Office said much of the embezzled money was used to
construct buildings, set up companies and buy shares on the stock market.
Doubts about the 27 billion dollar Three Gorges project in central Hubei
province surfaced in public last year when Premier Zhu Rongji issued a stern
warning to officials to ensure there was no "negligence" in the construction,
the brainchild of his predecessor Li Peng.
A month later the official press revealed that around 100 officials linked to
the project had been sanctioned for corruption involving sums of 1,200 to
24,000 dollars.
Many people living in the area are reluctant to leave the banks of the Yangtze
River to make way for the reservoir, while experts have questioned the
financial logic of the project and warned of a damaging impact on the
environment.
The official media has in the past blamed corruption for problems in the
relocation project. By 1998 only 60 percent of the new houses that should have
been built to house people in the dam's path had been finished.
_______________________
Doris Shen
International Rivers Network
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