Uni suspended over holiday con

By Yang Lifei and Chen Li  |   2008-12-9  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

THE State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs has suspended United States-based Northwestern Polytechnic University's overseas training qualifications after it provided a fake training itinerary for government delegations from the provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangxi who were really on holiday, according to Beijing News.

The suspension comes after the Department of Overseas Training under the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs ordered the Zhejiang Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs to investigate the 21-day travel program by a team of 23 Wenzhou city government officials. The trip cost almost 650,000 yuan (US$92,857) and has since been proven to be a vacation paid by taxpayers.

The scam was uncovered and posted online by a Web user called Chimeiwangliang2009 who described himself as a blue-collar worker in information industry. He said he obtained the travel papers when he picked up a shopping bag while taking a subway on Shanghai's Metro Line 2.

He said he sent the papers to Party discipline departments in the two cities as he was outraged that the business trips were actually vacations paid for by taxpayers.

Two officials in Jiangxi Province have already been sacked and another suspended after an initial inquiry backed up the online allegations that Xinyu city officials used nearly 360,000 yuan of public money to take a vacation in the US and Canada.

The investigation by the Department of Overseas Training showed that Northwestern Polytechnic University reduced training sessions to three days while increasing the number of cities on the trip from three to eight.

The department ordered domestic training groups scheduled to visit Northwestern Polytechnic University to change their overseas training agency. It also said domestic training groups were forbidden to visit Las Vegas.