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Public money used to pay for sauna, massage

By Liang Qiwen (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-05-26 09:23

Several officials are under investigation after they used public funds to pay for sauna and massages in Hunan province.

The officials from the management office of Honqi Reservoir spent a total of 6,000 yuan ($882) for sauna and massages at the Wangsheng Guesthouse in Qidong county, Xinhua reported yesterday.

The case was exposed after 12 receipts from the months of January, August, November and December but of an unknown year were recently posted on the Internet.

Li Guanghui, former Party chief of the management office, Xiao Bing, former internal affairs director, and driver Peng Xuyong were named on the receipts.

It's believed that the three men were at the hotel with senior officials.

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The Qidong county commission of discipline inspection and supervision bureau has established a special task force to investigate the matter.

An official who refused to be named with the bureau said the three men named on the receipts had been reimbursed the money from the county.

Chen Xuefeng, current Party chief of the management office at Hongqi Reservoir, said he took over from Li in March 2007.

"Li was transferred to another job and Xiao has retired," Chen said.

"Our office has about 340 employees, but we have very little money, sometimes we even cannot afford employees' salaries," he said.

Meanwhile, the unnamed Qidong official said the results of the investigation would be made public after the investigation was complete.

The receipts were posted on Tianya.cn, a popular community website, on Friday. They were originally published on china.com but had failed to gather much interest.

The publisher of the receipts, named "Zhaofu Xibai", meaning corrupt all day long, said they showed the corrupt and depraved lifestyle of some officials.

Most of the online comments criticized corruption, but some said the revelations demonstrated the Chinese have an increasing amount of freedom of speech.

"Spending thousands of yuan is just a small case compared to those big corruption cases, but at least people can find out about it and tell the public now," a netizen named "news observer" said.

"The Internet is playing a more and more important and powerful role."