$19m of social security benefits falsely claimed

BEIJING - About 70,000 people fraudulently claimed others' social security benefits totaling 118.07 million yuan ($19.15 million) in 2012, according to a Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MOHRSS) report on Tuesday.

As much as 113.89 million yuan of the fraudulently collected benefits have been recovered, the report said.

Last year, about 2.12 million audits were conducted nationwide on Chinese enterprises about their social insurance practices. The audits revealed unpaid social insurance premiums totaling 3.5 billion yuan by 8 million individual workers, of which 3.2 billion yuan has been paid back.

A total of 50 billion yuan of old-age pension insurance unpaid by employers was also recouped in 2012, according to the report.

By the end of 2012, China's basic old-age pension insurance program for urban workers covered 304.27 million people, with the balance of the funds hitting 2.39 trillion yuan, an increase of 444.5 billion yuan from the end of 2011, according to the ministry.

The country's urban basic medical insurance program covered 536.41 million people by the end of last year, the MOHRSS data showed.