Liu said that not all teachers who had left schools were still being paid and noted that the amount of money involved was not yet available.

In the city's Dong'an county, a total of 152 teachers had been found to be getting paychecks without working as of November 2010, said Yu Deman, deputy head of the county's education bureau.

Part of the funds had been deposited in the schools' accounts after the teachers had left their posts, said Yang Suguo, a discipline official in Lingling district. He added that the flow of the funds could be tracked.

In Ningyuan county, the funds were deposited directly into teachers' bank accounts, said Liu.

Yu told Xinhua that the Dong'an county education bureau held the funds that were wrongly sent to teachers who had left but said it had not used the money.

A teacher in Yongzhou city, who did not want to be named, said it was possible that the money had been misused or embezzled because of a lack of transparency in the schools' finances.

The city's education bureau claimed it had started to retrieve the misappropriated public money.

Lingling district said it had recovered about 560,000 yuan of the missing money.

Those involved will be punished if they are found guilty of a crime, said local authorities in Yongzhou city.