FORMER LOCAL LEADERS in Banqiao village, Hainan province, are being investigated for the squandering and misappropriation of funds. People.cn commented on Monday:

In less than a year and a half, the people in charge of the village spent more than 1.4 million yuan ($215,000) on feasts and falsified spending. This shows the corruption of the local village leaders.

Worse than the amount of public money squandered on meals, was the misappropriation of funds by exaggerating the spending on such things as street lights, trash bins and other public facilities. For example, the former village leaders claimed to have built a 100-square-meter public toilet that was actually only 32 sq m and to have paid 580 yuan for a trash can that had only cost about 100 yuan.