Project's cascade of corruption was a series of failed supervision

A WATER AND SOIL EROSION TREATMENT PROJECT in Huangyuan county, Central China's Hunan province, was a cash cow for more than 50 officials of county, city and the provincial governments. Guangming Daily comments:

Xinhua News Agency reported that the officials siphoned off nearly 68 percent of the 10 million yuan ($1.57 million) that the central government provided for the project. The fund was serially fleeced at least six times before reaching the project site. What is noteworthy is, this happened in 2013 after the central authorities' anti-graft campaign had heated up.

The project should have covered an area of 300 hectares. But on completion, it only treated 67 hectares of land. It should not have been difficult to spot the corruption clues. But the collective corruption was not uncovered until late 2015 when the National Audit Office carried out a spot check.