Police in east China are seeking a former county recruitment official who disappeared after being accused of taking bribes to allow unqualified people to attend the national college entrance exam this year.

 

Xu Yunfeng, former director of the recruitment office of Dangshan County Educational Bureau, Anhui Province, allegedly confessed to police on June 8 that he took bribes worth 24,000 yuan (US$3,157) from teachers and gave 747 unqualified people permission certificates to attend the national exam on June 7 and 8.

 

Xu disappeared when investigators decided to transfer him to judicial authorities for prosecution on June 20.

 

The case was discovered when police were investigating the county's national college entrance exam scam, in which university students were organized to sit the exam and then sell their test results to people who failed, changing the candidate identities along the way.

 

Police in Dangshan have arrested four people, who were found to have offered 41 college students in Hefei, capital of Anhui, 1,000 yuan each to take the exam.

 

But most of the college students failed to attend the exam as they had heard that police were alerted to the scam.

 

Zhang Hongxue, principal of Chengzhuang Middle School, was removed from his post and expelled from the Communist Party of China because of the scam.

 

Xu, was sacked and stripped of Party membership on June 23.

 

(Xinhua News Agency June 30, 2007)