The State Audit Agency has instructed HCM City authorities to punish the agencies and individuals who decided to pay $9 million in advance to the firm that developed Da Phuoc dump project.

The Da Phuoc dumping ground.

HCM City to turn rubbish dump into golf course?

The “secrets’ behind HCM City’s ‘state-of-the-art’ waste treatment project

NA deputies question investors and authorities about HCMC trash project

The SAV’s decision was released as part of its audit report on management and use of the state budget for environmental projects in 2006-2008.

In its report announced on December 2, the SAV said that the HCM City People’s Committee should punish agencies and officials who were involved in making a $9 million advance to Vietnam Waste Solutions, an American company owned by a Viet-kieu family, to build the Da Phuoc solid waste treatment plant.

“This is contrary to the Law on State Budget ,” Deputy Auditor General Le Hoang Quan told VietNamNet. He added that the act is more wrong because the money, which came from the national environmental protection budget, was used for in capital construction.

“Contractors are supposed to raise their own capital,” Quan said. “Once they sign a construction contract, they have to invest their capital in the project. In this case, they possibly had a corrupt purpose.”

The SAV also discovered that some government agencies didn’t pay fines collected for environmental infractions to the state budget. For example, the HCM City Department of Natural Resources and Environment didn’t return nearly eleven billion dong in compensation received for an oil spill accident in 2003 to the state budget. Instead, it deposited this money into a bank to earn profit. By December 31, 2008, the total capital and interest was 12.56 billion dong.

Also according to the SAV, HCM City failed to collect industrial waste water fees from over 1000 companies.

Ha Yen