China said on Friday that a government audit found that more than $900 million was misappropriated from the nation’s $37 billion social security fund in just the latest sweeping government fraud to be uncovered in the last two years.
The government did not announce any arrests or assign blame for the wrongdoing, but it said most of the money had been siphoned off for foreign investments, building projects and commercial loans.
The country’s social security fund was created in 2000 to help the government cope with its large and aging population and to provide a cushion in a country where the gap between the rich and the poor has widened drastically in recent years, despite a long-running economic boom. [Full Text]