Plan to monitor overseas trips by officials
- Source: Global Times
- [01:56 February 24 2010]
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By An Baijie
In an effort to prevent corrupt officials from absconding abroad with stolen public money, the Ministry of Supervision (MOS) wants to set up a system to monitor "naked officials," referring to those whose spouses and children live overseas.
At a meeting between 10 ministries including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Commerce, and the National Audit Office, the MOS said the problem is one of its key goals this year, according to a report published on the website of the National Bureau of Corruption of Prevention.
No details were given in the official report, which only said the supervision departments were going to study concrete measures to regulate "naked officials."
In November 2009, the Shenzhen government issued a regulation, stipulating that "naked officials" whose spouses and children have all migrated abroad or got the "green card" (permanent residence) in foreign countries, would never be elected as the head of the local Party committee, according to Guangzhou-based Nanfang Daily.
The MOS also vowed to monitor expenses related to overseas travel, slash the budget for overseas trips, and curb sightseeing trips.
Yang Xianghong, Party secretary of Lucheng district in Zhejiang Province, left his official tour group in Paris in 2009 and went to live with his daughter who lives in France.
The Party's disciplinary committee has been looking into the problem since Yang's case.
In total, there were 33,507 official groups (1.2 million officials) went on official trips abroad in 2009, nearly a 50 percent drop from the previ-ous three years that resulted in savings of more than 1.6 billion yuan ($234 million) compared with previous years, said the MOS report.
The country's supervision departments had been regulating the officials' publicly funded outbound trips for years, but local officials routinely find excuses to travel overseas, said the China Youth Daily.
