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Xinhua News Agency
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Huge Moutai bill lands liaison office heads in hot water

Authorities in two Henan cities have launched an investigation into claims that their Beijing liaison offices spent 660,000 yuan (HK$748,000) on bottles of Moutai liquor that turned out to be fake, Xinhua said.

The heads of the two liaison offices have also been publicly reprimanded by their respective governments in Luohe and Xuchang, Xinhua reported.

This came after reports that the two liaison offices had spent a huge amount on 777 bottles of Kweichow Moutai - the most famous liquor on the mainland, in early February.

The officials later found all the bottles were fake and complained to the Beijing Municipal Industrial and Commercial Bureau, which alerted police.

The story caused an uproar on the mainland, with people furious at the expenditure.

Three people had been arrested for selling the fake liquor, Xinhua said, adding that the offices had paid an average 849 yuan per bottle, equivalent to the monthly salary of many migrant workers.

Many netizens have also asked why the offices, with only a handful of staff, needed so many bottles of expensive liquor. Some suspected the bottles were to be used as bribes.

Almost every mainland city has a Beijing liaison office, responsible for relaying the cities' concerns to central government and lobbying.

The exact number of such offices is not known, but the Legal Daily newspaper has estimated that there are more than 10,000 of them in Beijing.

The liaison office heads claimed they bought the liquor in February on behalf of a hotel and a paper-making company in Henan but 'the real story was not as reported', said the new head of Luohe's liaison office, surnamed Dong.

But netizens were not buying it, saying liaison offices were never meant to be liquor buyers for businesses. It is not known how much the two offices spend annually on catering and entertainment.

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