China News Service, Beijing, September 11th. On the 11th, the General Office of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the General Office of the Ministry of Finance of China (hereinafter referred to as the two departments) publicly reported six typical cases of accountability for hidden debts of local governments.
——Wu Shenghua, former member of the Standing Committee of the Guizhou Provincial Party Committee and former secretary of the Bijie Municipal Party Committee, has a serious deviation in his view of political performance. The new official ignores the old accounts and fails to implement the Party Central Committee's major decisions and deployments on preventing and resolving local debt risks. Wu Shenghua also had other serious violations of discipline and law. He was expelled from the party and dismissed from public office. His suspected criminal issues were transferred to the procuratorate for review and prosecution in accordance with the law.
——Lan Hongbin, former member of the Party Leadership Group and Deputy Mayor of Yibin Municipal People's Government of Sichuan Province, did not perform his duties correctly and made illegal decisions to create hidden debt problems. Lan Hongbin also had other serious violations of discipline and law. He was expelled from the party and dismissed from public office. His suspected criminal issues were transferred to the procuratorate for review and prosecution in accordance with the law.
——Linwei District, Weinan City, Shaanxi Province used public hospitals to borrow money to implement public welfare projects, resulting in an additional hidden debt of 100 million yuan (the same below). Cao Jie, then Party Working Committee Secretary and Director of Linwei District Health Bureau of Weinan City, and other relevant responsible persons were held accountable.
——The hidden debt of Jieshou City, Fuyang City, Anhui Province was 140 million yuan, and Li Pan, then chairman of Jieshou Urban and Rural Construction Development Group Co., Ltd., and other relevant responsible persons were held accountable.
——The hidden debt of Jiujiang Economic and Technological Development Zone in Jiangxi Province was settled by an untrue amount of 1 billion yuan. You Xi, then director of the Financial Comprehensive Service Center of Jiujiang Economic and Technological Development Zone and other relevant responsible persons were held accountable.
——The hidden debt of Yinchuan City in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region was 1.8 billion yuan, and the then legal representative and general manager of Yinchuan Binhe Yellow River Bridge Management Co., Ltd. Wang Rongya and other relevant responsible persons were held accountable.
The two departments said that the six typical cases revealed that some local and unit leading cadres had deviations in their views on performance, weak sense of discipline, and continued to impose discounts and modifications, which seriously affected the effectiveness of preventing and resolving hidden debt risks. All localities and units must learn lessons from the reported typical cases, draw inferences from one example and draw lessons from other cases; always establish risk awareness and bottom-line thinking, resolutely curb the increase in hidden debt, and properly resolve the stock of hidden debt. Discipline inspection and supervision agencies and financial departments at all levels must continue to strengthen the investigation, handling and accountability of hidden debt issues, and achieve "discovery, investigation and punishment, and accountability" for illegal activities such as new hidden debts and false debt settlements, and effectively prevent and resolve local government debt risks.
