China Sentences Official to Death Over Dam Fraud

A local bureaucrat has been sentenced to death for embezzling funds meant for resettling people displaced by the massive Three Gorges Dam, in a case that underscores China’s persisting problems with the controversial project and with corruption.

The case was the first known instance of a death sentence being issued for corruption involving the dam, the world’s largest hydroelectric project.

Huang Faxiang, head of a local land management bureau, was sentenced to death Feb. 28 for taking $1.4 million earmarked for resettling people in Fengdu, a county that will be partly submerged by the project, a court official said Tuesday.

Huang invested the funds in stocks and a local hotel, said a spokeswoman for the No. 3 Intermediate People’s Court in the central city of Chongqing, speaking on routine condition of anonymity.

Word that officials were misusing project funds has been filtering out for years from the dam area along the Yangtze River, drawing warnings from senior Chinese leaders of disruptions to the project. Critics of the project reported that resettlement had all but stopped last year.

China’s government says 1.3 million people will have to move by the time the dam’s 350-mile-long reservoir is fully filled in 2009. Independent groups say the total number who will have to be moved is 2 million.

China’s top auditor acknowledged in January that local officials had embezzled and wasted 12% of the relocation budget--nearly $60 million.

Chinese leaders are worried that endemic corruption nationwide is eroding popular support for Communist Party rule.