China's lottery authority announced a five-month campaign to make the nation's biggest lottery game more transparent following a lotto fund embezzlement scandal.
The campaign will focus on regulating sales of Welfare Lottery tickets, checking loopholes in management of funds generated by the lottery and improving supervision over the drawing of lotto numbers, civil affairs minister Li Liguo said during a teleconference.
The sales and use of funds must be publicized in a timely manner, Li said.
The move is an effort to repair the image of the scandal-hit Welfare Lottery, which saw sales of 206 billion yuan (about 33.6 billion U.S. dollars) in 2014.
The National Audit Office announced last week that more than 16.9 billion yuan raised through all China's lotteries was embezzled or misused by lottery management and vendors between the start of 2012 and October 2014.
The "problematic" money constituted more than a quarter of the 65.8 billion yuan of lottery funds reviewed in an audit conducted in November and December, according to the audit report.
China's lotteries are managed by the Ministry of Finance, MCA, and the General Administration of Sport, with the MCA mainly in charge of the Welfare Lottery.
The audit results showed the MCA misused 4.27 billion yuan of funds raised through the lottery. It also engaged in illegal online sales worth 13.3 billion yuan.
"Any misuse and waste of welfare lottery funds has not lived up to the trust of lottery buyers or society, and has damaged the image of the Party and the government," said Li.
He urged authorities under the MCA to "introspect and correct every wrongdoing uncovered by the audit."
He promised to do his best to make the game more transparent and erase public doubts and misunderstandings.
