Mainland developers, including Hong Kong-listed Evergrande Real Estate Group, have been criticised by the Ministry of Finance for providing inaccurate information about asset values and underpaid taxes.
Evergrande is among the 114 property and non-property companies that the ministry inspected last year. The inspection found that Evergrande provided inaccurate information about 6.4 billion yuan (HK$7.8 billion) of assets, 5.6 billion yuan of debts and profits of 118 million yuan in 2009. The developer also underpaid taxes of 246 million yuan, Xinhua quoted the ministry as saying.
Evergrande was also blamed for not including 57 subsidiaries in its consolidated financial statement for the year ended December 31, 2009.
Some developers reported inaccurate revenue figures, overstated costs and delayed or underpaid taxes, the ministry said.
Sino-Ocean Land and its subsidiaries have reported inaccurate information about 53.74 million of assets and inaccurate revenue of 70.63 million yuan in their financial statements in 2009.
The company underpaid taxes of 33.56 million yuan.
Evergrande yesterday admitted the mistakes, but emphasised that the firm inspected by the ministry is not the listed company.