Trouble seems to stalk China Petrochemical Corp after a government report disclosed that a subsidiary of the biggest Asian oil refiner offered its employees more than 50 million yuan (US$7.87 billion) in bonus without approval, while the state-owned company has also been accused of evading nearly 12 million yuan in taxes.
The report by the Ministry of Finance came after media reports revealed on Monday that an arm of China Petrochemical, also known as Sinopec Group, in Shandong Province spent 130,000 yuan printing more than 500 boxes of business cards.
The ministry alleged on Tuesday in a statement that the Changling branch of Sinopec's asset management firm in Jilin Province offered its employees a total of 50.08 million yuan as bonus while Sinopec was also said to have falsely stated 52.06 million yuan as income in its books and failed to pay 11.82 million yuan in taxes in 2009.
Critics have long targeted Sinopec as it is seen to spend public money lavishly while it gets subsidies worth billions of yuan annually from the government ostensibly because it suffers huge losses in its oil refinery business due to rising oil prices.
In 2009, the firm spent 1.6 million yuan on a luxurious chandelier for its office building. In September last year, its Guangdong branch spent 2.59 million yuan on hundreds of bottles of fine wine and liquor.
The company received at least 50.3 billion yuan in government subsidies in 2008, 4.9 billion yuan in 2007, 5 billion yuan in 2006 and 9.5 billion yuan in 2005, according to the company's earnings reports.
Its listed subsidiary China Petroleum and Chemical Corp said in August that its net income in the first half of this year rose 12 percent to 41.17 billion yuan, or 0.462 yuan a share, from a restated 36.8 billion yuan, or 0.419 yuan, a year earlier.
