Charity cleared of money laundering accusation

Independent auditing results cleared China Charities Aid Foundation for Children of accusations that it was involved in money laundering activities after Internet users found the foundation had made and spent a lot more money than the amount of donations received in 2011, Xinhuanet.com reported Thursday.

Human error is blamed for the huge gap of billions of yuan, because a worker wrongly put 4.75 billion yuan ($762.38 million) instead of the correct figure of 475 million yuan into the columns of receipts and payments while compiling the annual report, said the auditing report released by Beijing Zhongli Chenghui Accounting Firm.

Beijing Zhongzheng Tiantong Certified Public Accountants, who audited the foundation's annual report in 2011, also issued a statement apologizing for not having detected the error.