Local audit departments found that huge sums of money have been misappropriated as auditors wrapped up their annual audits of the governmental budgets on Thursday.

Audit departments in southwest China's Sichuan Province found that all audited departments either misused funds or failed to follow regulations, reported the China Business News.

The report covers 14 provincial departments, nine universities and part of the fine management of local courts and traffic police departments. The report gives the names of violators and their transgressions.

Compared with last year, the sum of "problematic money" was substantially reduced, according to the report.

However, all the audited departments were found to have violations such as the misappropriation of special funds, default of money that should be given to the provincial treasury or even embezzlement.

The Sichuan Industry and Commerce Administration did not hand in the more than 20 million yuan (US$2.5 million) in taxes it collected last year, but instead, used the money to subsidize grassroots industry and commerce bureaux.

The report also showed that the province's nine universities failed to hand in as much as 619.25 million yuan (US$77 million) to the provincial treasury and held back more than 60 million yuan (US$7.5 million).

Meanwhile, the audit department has revealed the embezzlements of some local taxation bureaux.

Four members of a direct subsidiary of the Bazhong Taxation Bureau, including Chen Jian, the financial section chief of the subsidiary, were arrested for embezzling huge sums of tax money, according to Huang Jinsheng, director of the provincial audit department.

Chen Jian is the only person named in the report. "We encountered many obstacles and overcame a lot of difficulties in finding clues in Chen's case; some of the plotting in this case is appalling," Huang was quoted by the Chengdu Economic Daily as saying, adding that individual economic crime is the most challenging work for auditors.

Nationwide, almost all the audit organs of each province revealed some violations.

"The phenomenon of misappropriation remains outstanding," said Yang Xiaochao, director of the Beijing Audit Bureau.

The city's 19 departments misappropriated a total of 174 million yuan (US$21.75 million) last year, according to Yang.

When the local audit department in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province launched a campaign to audit 600 units and projects, they found 1.06 billion yuan (US$132.5 million) of "problematic money." The audit of 100 hospitals in the province unearthed a total of 725 million yuan (US$90 million) in misused funds.

By the end of June, 1.27 billion yuan (US$158 million) of "problematic money" were found in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Last month, in his annual audit report to National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee members, Li Jinhua, Auditor-General of the National Audit Office (NAO), revealed that 48 central government departments misappropriated 5.51 billion yuan (US$ 668 million) from budget allocations last year.

(China Daily July 29, 2006)