China Red Cross Society to publish donation list

: 0 Comment(s)Print E-mail Global Times, July 30, 2011

Adjust font size:

A screenshot of the official website of China Red Cross Society, who will debut an online platform where donors can investigate what happened to their money. [File Photo]

Trying to demonstrate greater transparency, the embattled Red Cross Society of China on Sunday will debut an online trial platform where donors can investigate what happened to their money.

"Some 2.492 billion yuan ($387.16 million) of donations will first be put into the platform's database on the organization's website," Ding Shuo, director of policies and regulations, told the Global Times on Friday.

That first batch of data, Ding said, will reveal how the organization handled donations in the wake of the magnitude-6.9 earthquake that hit Yushu county in Qinghai last year, killing nearly 2,700 people and leaving more than 100,000 residents homeless.

"It includes more than 100,000 sums of money from individuals, organizations and corporations from home and abroad," Ding said.

Ding didn't elaborate any further on how online Web users might check or explore the official statistics.

A society staff member who requested anonymity said that donations to other natural disasters in recent years would also be included in the database.

"We welcome supervision and advice from the public concerning the trial online platform, which is far from being perfect," the society announced on its microblog on Thursday, citing "hasty preparation" and "no precedent to follow."

The platform would disclose donation details including income and expenses, the organization stated.

Society Secretary General Wang Rupeng had promised in late June to launch an online platform as soon as possible following the public outcry over the Guo Meimei scandal.

Claiming herself "general manager of the Red Cross Chamber of Commerce," 20-year-old Guo showed off her luxury lifestyle on her microblog, triggering widespread corruption allegations against the charity organization.

Some analysts doubted the move could assuage the organization's crisis of credibility.

"Without participation and supervision from a third party, the figures provided on the platform will be far less convincing," Deng Guosheng, director of the Non Governmental Organization Research Center at Tsinghua University, told the Global Times on Friday. "That's not even getting into the fact that the donation data is probably free of necessary auditing."

Red Cross-related scandals have not abated in recent weeks: Ruan Heng, former vice president of the Kunming Red Cross, was charged on July 22 with embezzling more than 56,000 yuan from 2006 to 2007, during which Ruan reportedly reimbursed her personal spending on underwear, cigarettes and wine with public funds.