中国网站品牌栏目（频道）
A local tobacco authority chief has been removed from his post and expelled from the Party from for corruption, in a case that has also exposed China's tobacco monopoly's huge profits, officials said on Tuesday.
The Guangdong provincial disciplinary watchdog for the Communist Party has ordered Chen Wenzhu to be expelled after investigations confirmed graft allegations against him.
Chen, head of the local branch of the tobacco monopoly in the southern city of Shanwei, has also been removed from the monopoly's top post, pending legal procedure.
Chen's case created a sensation after an informant posted a list of the monopoly’s lavish bills on the Internet, showing that 2 million yuan ($135,000) a month was spent on dining and entertaining in addition to 120,000 yuan spent at the monopoly’s canteen each day.
Initial probes found the monopoly's expenditures on entertainment activities exceeded its budget, but did not give specific numbers.
Further investigations found that Chen had given nine relatives and 36 others jobs with the company without following official hiring procedures.
He also forged IDs to bypass the Party's restrictions on officials traveling outside the mainland and "illegally visited" Hong Kong and Macao about 74 times.
China's State tobacco monopoly, the China Tobacco Corporation, is the world's largest cigarette producer. China has the world's largest population of smokers at more than 300million people, and about 1.2 million people die of smoking-related illnesses each year.
Huge profits generated by the tobacco industry, some of which go to the government as taxes, are said to have hampered tobacco control efforts.
From 2006 to 2010, taxes and profits generated by the tobacco industry jumped to 604 billion yuan with an annual growth of about 19 percent.
（中国日报网英语点津 Helen 编辑）
About the broadcaster:
Emily Cheng is an editor at China Daily. She was born in Sydney, Australia and graduated from the University of Sydney with a degree in Media, English Literature and Politics. She has worked in the media industry since starting university and this is the third time she has settled abroad - she interned with a magazine in Hong Kong 2007 and studied at the University of Leeds in 2009.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
