Officials from 20 state ministries and central government agencies have attempted to cheat at least 142 million yuan (HK$162 million) by using fake invoices, the National Audit Office has found.
In delivering the office's annual audit report for last year, office director Liu Jiayi told the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the country's top legislature, yesterday that his office had done a random examination of nearly 30,000 questionable invoices belonging to government agencies. It found 5,170 with expenditures totalling 142 million yuan were fake.
Liu did not reveal the names of the central government agencies implicated, but he said eight of them and their affiliated departments used phoney invoices showing 97.8 million yuan in illicit allowances and benefits to employees.
The other agencies and their affiliates were found to have faked documents to dodge taxes, he said.
Irregularities implicating central government agencies ranging from illegal petty cash accounts to misappropriation of public funds are a chronic problem because of a lack of transparency and supervision.
But Chinese Academy of Governance Professor Wang Yukai said this audit report was particularly alarming because the central government agencies had never been implicated in invoice scams on such a large scale.
