More than 55.79 million yuan (about 6.79 million US dollars) of state subsidies to displaced migrants at the Three Gorges Project have been found embezzled by 23 officials at county level since the project was built 12 years ago, the Beijing News reported on June 21.

The Chinese government has allocated 45.3 billion yuan (about 5.48 billion US dollars) to compensate about one million residents who had move home out of the dam areas to make way for construction of the Three Gorges Project.

The embezzled funds made up 1.23 per thousand of the total government input, with nearly 48 million yuan (about 5.8 million US dollars) retrieved so far, report said.

Between 1993 and 2004, central China's Hubei Province and Chongqing Municipality in southwest China have cracked down on 327 cases of illegitimate utilization of the relocation funds. Of the 369 violators, 23 are officials at the county level. They have all been seriously punished according to law.

Former teller Wang Sumei of the Relocation Bureau of Wanzhou District of Chongqing, for instance, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for embezzling more than 1.3 million yuan (about 157, 195 US dollars). Huang Faxiang, former director of the Bureau of Land and Resources of Fengdu County, was executed for embezzling more than 12 million yuan (about 1.45 million US dollars).

Source: Xinhua