Sichuan earthquake relief money spent on luxury cars

Source: Telegraph

Officials in Sichuan province have outraged donors by buying a series of luxury cars while millions of refugees face freezing temperatures in makeshift shelters.

Almost every Chinese person donated money in the wake of the Sichuan earthquake last May in a display of charity that unified the country. The disaster claimed the lives of more than 87,000 people and was the deadliest earthquake to strike China for half-a-century.

However, there is growing evidence that a large slice of their pledges has been siphoned off or misused by local officials.

According to China's National Audit Office, there have been close to 2,000 complaints of corrupt behaviour. Some local officials exaggerated the death tolls in their counties in order to grab a larger share of relief aid. In Chongzhou City, the tourism bureau and transport department filed their paperwork twice in order to win 1.23 billion yuan (£123m) of additional aid.

The latest outrage came when a full inventory of the luxury cars purchased by Beichuan County was leaked onto the internet. Beichuan was totally destroyed and 3,000 of its residents have been consigned to temporary shelter for the next three years while a new site is chosen for their town.

According to the inventory, a number of top-of-the-range Toyota Land Cruisers and Nissan X-Trails were purchased, one of which cost over 1.1 million yuan (£110,000).

Can't say I'm surprised. What will it take for people to realize that communism is a fraud. Communism was grown through fear and lies. Through nationalism and poverty lines. People who are poor leaned towards communism in order to be more even with the rich. Little do they realize that the richer got poor and the poor became even worse. All the money goes to government officials. Always has always will. China is probably the richest country in the world yet the majority of its people still live in a hole in the ground. Fourty billion dollars for the worst Olympics in history. Where's that money now? And now one of the worst disaster in Chinese history? Where's that money now? It's fucking sad.