22% are involved in agriculture, poverty-alleviation projects
China's top procuratorate has investigated nearly 29,000 officials involved in the poverty-alleviation programs and agricultural sector for alleged duty-related crimes from 2013 to May this year, or over a fifth of officials investigated for duty-related crimes, a senior official of the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) said Tuesday.
The number of suspected crimes has been rising, involving more grass-roots officials and often happened in the declaration, review and management of public funds, said Chen Zhengyun, deputy director of the SPP's duty-related crime prevention department.
Village-level officials committed 80 percent of crimes in poverty-alleviation programs, Chen said.
"We cannot ignore crimes involving grass-roots officials, as they could directly undermine relations between the Party and the masses and jeopardize the Party's foundation," Song Hansong, director of the SPP's duty-related crime prevention department, said.
Graft in poverty-alleviation programs can be traced to the concentration of power in grass-roots officials, as these officials directly handle the funds provided by the central government and decide how these funds are used, said Zhuang Deshui, a researcher at Peking University.
The crackdown in the agricultural and poverty-alleviation sectors is partially a result of China's sweeping anti-graft campaign which targets both top and low level officials, Du Xiaoshan, a researcher at the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.
Du told the Global Times that his research showed a majority of grass-roots officials are prone to extravagance in government events as well as in construction projects.
"They like to build elaborate buildings to brag about their achievements and also embezzle public funds by purchasing expensive cigarettes and wine at government receptions," Du said.
The SPP said that local officials did not just embezzle poverty-alleviation funds but came up with more creative ways, such as getting funds with bogus poverty reduction projects, using public funds to purchase gifts and withholding money that should be surrendered to their superiors.
One case revealed by the SPP involved a Party secretary of a village in Yunnan Province and his wife. The SPP said the couple concealed and embezzled about 80,000 yuan ($12,880) in subsidies for four orphans from 2012 to 2013. He was sentenced to seven years in jail for graft in 2014.
Both Zhuang and Du called on the government to establish a supervision mechanism to ensure that public funds are properly used.
The SPP also launched a two-year campaign to crack down on corruption of poverty-alleviation programs, and will focus on crimes that involve large amounts of money and dereliction of duty, according to the SPP.
According to the poverty-alleviation office of State Council, by 2012, 592 counties in 21 regions, whose yearly per capita incomes were below 2,300 yuan, were below the national poverty line.
China increased the amount of poverty-alleviation funds to 46 billion yuan this year, up 8 percent compared to the previous year, according to the Ministry of Finance.
