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China Graft Boom as Brown Envelopes Go Plastic Spurs Crackdown
May 31, 2011

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fanelli
2:08am Jun 1, 2011

A former finance official in Shandong province's Dezhou city was jailed for life last month after "accepting a large amount of cash, gifts, and pre- paid cards,"

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Maybe Indonesia should emulate China on this issue

)))

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Beijing. China's bribe-takers prefer their payoffs in the form of one of the $246 billion worth of pre-paid plastic gift cards issued each year in the country, according to a new study by a Beijing court.

Less conspicuous than cash or a brown envelope, the electronic payment cards are popular with corrupt officials because they can be used to shop anonymously for luxury goods in China's burgeoning number of high-end malls, a survey by Chaoyang District Court showed. Cards can also be passed to relatives or sold at a discount to scalpers, according to the study carried in yesterday's Legal Daily.

The government last week clamped down on the abuse of the cards, setting a cap on the amount they can carry and tightening identity disclosure rules in a bid to stem graft that Premier Wen Jiabao in March termed "rampant."

A former finance official in Shandong province's Dezhou city was jailed for life last month after "accepting a large amount of cash, gifts, and pre- paid cards," according to the state-run People' Daily.

Anyone buying a card of more than 1,000 yuan will have to show their identity, under rules announced May 25 by the State Council. Institutions purchasing cards with a total value of 5,000 yuan and individuals buying a total of 50,000 yuan have to pay through bank transfer instead of cash, according to the rules, which took effect immediately.

The People's Bank of China, the nation's central bank, and the Ministry of Commerce will lead a special task force to clean up the market by the end of this year.

"The rules are designed to curb the current prevailing abnormal phenomenon of purchasing pre-paid cards with public funds and accepting them as bribes," the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention said in a statement on the official Xinhua News Agency's website last week.

The convicted finance official said he thought it was natural for other departments to give him pre-paid cards during festivals in return for his help, according to his confession posted on the website of the People's Daily's Tianjin branch.

Bloomberg