$34m of quake aid misused, NAO says

CHENGDU: The country's top auditing authority said yesterday that 230 million yuan ($34 million) of reconstruction funds for the 8.0-magnitude Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan province had been misused.

The National Audit Office (NAO) announced the results of its audit on 72 major post-quake reconstruction projects and the building of 753 schools and urban and rural houses in 22 counties in Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces, which were hit hard by the earthquake on May 12, 2008.

According to the NAO, 4,549 auditors tracked reconstruction projects in the three provinces from last June to November and found a number of problems.