A growing number of Party and government officials are expected to be audited when they leave their current positions within the next two years, said Li Jinhua, China's top government auditor.

So-called leaving-post auditing "has proven effective in strengthening the examination and supervision of officials," said Li, auditor-in-chief of the National Audit Office. "It serves as an alert for the officials."

Government auditors launched leaving-post auditing, which also covers bosses of state-owned enterprises, in 1998. The work garnered much attention because of past complaints that it was difficult to hold officials responsible for their mistakes after they left.

Li said auditors at his office and local subsidiaries reviewed the economic activities of more than 40,000 officials at all levels during the past two years.

They included 10 former ministers, vice-ministers and key State firm executives, he said.

About 1,500 were found problematic. As a result, 500 were removed from their new posts and 1,000 were forwarded to judicial departments, he said.

Losses worth 5 billion yuan (US$600 million) were attributed to officials' poor policy-making and management. Embezzlement of 300 million yuan (US$36 million) was also uncovered.

But no major problems were found in the auditing of ministerial and vice-ministerial officials, he said.

Despite the findings in leaving-post auditing, the auditors actually made more headlines in recent years in other aspects of their work.

They disclosed some major financial malpractice cases, such as the Ministry of Water Resources' misuse of funds for water conservancy facilities to finance construction of its office building; false financial reports of state-owned enterprises; and some local governments' misappropriation of funds earmarked for migrant relocation from the Three Gorges Dam area.

Li said investigations into particularly bad corruption cases will remain a mission for government auditors, though auditing of financial departments' reports on revenue and expenditure in the government budget has always been its primary task.

But he said government auditors should not be expected to be able to catch all wrongdoers.

Bribes can be behind some unreasonable policies and arrangements, but it is usually difficult for the auditors to discern since financial reports are their sole evidence, he said. Li also said his office is considering making some of its auditing reports public to increase transparency.

(China Daily January 9, 2002)