Senior executives of power utility State Grid punished over lavish lunch
Public footed 25,000-yuan bill for banquet attended by chief accountant and another department head during inspection tour of Shanghai, discipline inspectors say
Two officials from a major state-owned power company have been punished for attending to an extravagant banquet paid for with by public funds, the top anti-graft watchdog said.
Li Ruge, chief accountant of State Grid Corporation of China, and Xu Peng, director of its industrial development department, both received serious warnings for violating Communist Party rules on maintaining austerity and frugality, the Central Committee for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said in a statement on its website.
The decision was made by the discipline inspection authority of State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, CCDI said.
Li and Xu attended a 22,500-yuan (HK$32,000) lunch, hosted by State Grid’s Shanghai branch, in October, 2013 while they were conducting an inspection in the city, the statement said.
Li was also handed a demerit on his record, the statement said, adding that other officials at the banquet should also be punished in line with party discipline as advised.
The decision to punish the two men follows CCDI’s announcement that it had launched a two-month discipline inspection of the national electricity behemoth in late February.