SOE inspections uncover more graft, accelerating reform

BEIJING - China's anti-corruption watchdog has revealed graft found in its latest inspections of State-owned enterprises (SOEs), a campaign which many hope will inspire SOE reform.

The Communist Party of China's (CPC) Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) on Thursday started to make public the results of its third round of inspections in 2014, targeting major SOEs.

Issues they found include leaders of energy company Shenhua Group accepting bribes in the coal trade and officials with China Unicom "colluding with contractors or suppliers, using their power to seek money or sex".

Other issues including buying and selling of official positions, wining and dining at public expense, and helping relatives open businesses and obtain illegal profits were discovered in China Huadian Corporation, Dongfeng Motor Corporation and other enterprises.

For the first time, the CCDI's website posted pictures of the inspection teams notifying heads of the firms of the results. The pictures mainly show several inspectors on one side of a table and an enterprise's chief on the other.

The fifth plenary session of the 18th CCDI, which concluded on Jan 14, set the task of inspecting all major SOEs this year, making combating corruption in SOEs one of the priorities for 2015.

Previous inspections over the past two years covered 14 major SEOs, which led to the fall of over 70 SOE executives in 2014.

In fact, investigations into officials implicated in the latest round of inspections had begun way before the inspections' results were made public. As of Jan 7, 12 officials in five companies were being probed for suspected "serious law and discipline violations" or "duty-related crime", euphemisms for corruption.