Sunday 25 June 2017

China government auditor detects fraud

Shocking (although not unexpected) article in The Malay Mail by Reuters: "China auditor uncovers 200b yuan in fake revenue at state firms", some snippets:


China’s government auditor said in its 2016 report published today that 18 of 20 central state firms it audited had inflated revenue by 200 billion yuan (RM125.4 billion) and profits by 20.3 billion yuan in recent years.

The companies audited include China National Petroleum Corporation, China Huaneng Group and Sinochem Group.


The report from the National Audit Office also said that due to inadequate risk control measures, the 20 centrally-administered firms had put overseas investments worth 38.5 billion yuan at risk.



Implications for China listed companies in Malaysia are bad, I expect things to be worse from an accounting point of view. Several of those companies are finally showing their true colours.

Will there be even a sliver of justice by the authorities coming down on the real culprits, and will the Chinese authorities lend a helping hand? I strongly doubt it.

With hindsight we are all experts. But the sad part is that many warnings were out there, already a long time ago. One of my first blog postings from 2011 (!) can be found here: China companies listed on BM.

"Where is Ze Moola" had written a lot about the same issue long before that.

Malaysian investors who poured hundreds of millions of RM in the IPOs of these companies have been hugely disadvantaged. Was this really necessary, should the authorities have listened more to the critical voices?

2 comments:

  1. Dear Sir,

    Whatever happened to Where is Ze Moola?

    His/her blog was brilliantly scathing.

    Hope he/she is well.

    ReplyDelete
  2. No idea, hope he is doing well.

    ReplyDelete