Time to stop the rot in the lottery system
ystemic corruption has caused irreparable losses … to the lottery system. It is almost a disaster.”
This statement is from Feng Lizhi, former deputy director of China Welfare Lottery Management Center, or CWL. He and 13 of his colleagues, including two former directors and three former deputy directors, are under investigation for “systemic lottery corruption”.
On Tuesday, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Communist Party of China’s top anti-corruption watchdog, released videos on its official site of the 14 suspects regretting their misdeeds.
Two successive top CWL officials, Bao Xuequan and Wang Suying, are under investigation for suspected embezzlement of funds. And their predecessor, Chen Chuanshu, received disciplinary punishment in July for failing to supervise Bao when the latter served as his deputy. The amount of money they embezzled has not been made public, but lottery corruption has attracted so many eyeballs that by Wednesday night it had become one of the hottest topics on the online social networks.
The CWL is in charge of issuing welfare lotteries across the country and is supposed to put the “profit” it earns from selling the lotteries into a public welfare fund to help improve public welfare. So when buying CWL lotteries, people not only try their luck, but also help improve public welfare.
And when they realize their money has been misused, they feel a sense of loss, as well as lose faith in the lottery management system and the public welfare system. The CWL and welfare lottery have been receiving increasing flak on micro blogs, with many netizens saying they won’t buy CWL lotteries any more.
Feng is right — the damage their corrupt practices have caused to the lottery system can never be overestimated. Judging from what Feng and his colleagues have said in the videos, they all knew embezzling the lottery funds was a crime, but they still did it.
According to a National Audit Office report in 2014, there were problems with 16.9 billion yuan ($2.43 billion) of the CWL funds, or more than a quarter of the 65.8 billion yuan its officials had audited. The report prompted the antigraft agencies to swing into action, dig out evidence and eventually put all the 14 suspects under investigation.
Since education and re-education programs have failed to prevent some officials from indulging in corrupt practices, there is a need to strengthen supervision of the lottery system so the officials in charge don’t get a chance to embezzle funds.
In the welfare lottery case, for example, financial departments at various levels are supposed to supervise the use of the lottery public welfare funds. Yet, surprisingly, local financial departments are in charge of allocating those funds. In other words, the local financial departments supervise themselves, which is ridiculous.
In the central government, the Ministry of Finance supervises the Ministry of Civil Affairs in allocating funds, but both are ministerial-level departments and the former hardly has any power to effectively supervise the latter. And lax supervision breeds corruption.
The most practical solution to the problem of lax supervision is to give the public a bigger say in the process. For example, it should be mandatory for the head of the lottery department to submit the annual report to the legislature at the corresponding level, and the latter should be given the power to approve or disapprove of the report. Also, the annual report on the lottery public welfare funds should be made public, so that anyone with doubts can complain to the anti-corruption agencies.
Moreover, the audit office should more frequently audit the accounts of the lottery department so that problems can be detected and addressed before they can grow and cause irreparable damage to the department.
The lottery system cannot afford to suffer another corruption scandal case.
There is a need to strengthen supervision of the lottery system so the officials in charge don’t get a chance to embezzle funds.