Chongqing’s shady hotel project

Government officials in Wanzhou district, Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, were accused of colluding with a company to embezzle State assets involving a key five-star hotel project, the Legal Daily reported Thursday.

The developer of the five-star hotel, the Chongqing Zejiang Industrial Development Co which is registered in the city's Jiangnan New Area, bought a 95,000-square-meter commercial property for just 57.42 million yuan ($9.21 million), some 350 million yuan below market value, the report said.

The company benefited from other preferential treatment that included receiving a refund of 60 percent of the land cost simply for starting construction on schedule in May 2011, reported the Legal Daily.

Xu Shengjun, a senior official with the discipline inspection work committee of Jiangnan New Area, said the land is likely worth 5,000 yuan per square meter, while the developers paid just 600 yuan a square meter. "There might be some other factors involved," he said.

The land purchase information, available on the district's official website, shows the Zejiang company bought the land on April 2, 2011.

The district's publicity department refused to comment on the case and the company could not be reached by the Global Times on Thursday.

A worker from the Jiangnan committee, who refused to be named, told the Global Times that the hotel project is a market-oriented project. "At that time, few investors came to the new area, and these investors got the land through legal procedures," she said.

However, Zhou Maorong, 56, a former hotel project manager from the China-Chong-qing Weitai Construction Engineering Co, who committed suicide in 2011, wrote in his will that he had "decided to use his life to reveal the cheats involved in the project," according to the newspaper.

Zejiang was also accused of delaying payment to the migrant workers who worked on the construction of the project.

Weitai finally ended the contract with Zejiang last year, and the Chongqing Construction Ninth Engineering Co took over construction last July.

The new project manager, Huang Jinguo of the Chong-qing Construction Ninth Engineering Co, said that his company prepaid 50 million yuan for the project in the past months.

"The administrative committee gradually lost confidence in Zejiang, as it found the developer was not so qualified and financial problems exist," Xu told the Legal Daily.

The worker with the administrative committee told the Global Times that the company's financial problems could have been caused by the economic downturn.

"The project has not been stopped, and it is still under construction. Workers are going home for Spring Festival," she added.