As much as US$4.2 million allocated for survivors of a dam collapse in southern Laos has been misappropriated, the governor of Attapeu province has told the State Inspection Authority, provincial officials told Radio Free Asia.
The newly appointed governor, Lt. Gen. Vanthong Kongmany, reported the missing funds to the agency on Jan. 10, the officials said.
“Many provincial government departments are involved in the loss,” said an Attapeu Province official, who like other sources in this report requested anonymity for safety reasons.
“The upper-level authorities haven’t given us a lot of information,” he said. “The money must have been used inappropriately.”
On the night of July 23, 2018, following heavy rains, billions of cubic feet of water poured over a collapsed saddle dam at the Xe Pian-Xe Namnoy hydropower project. The disaster swept away homes and caused severe flooding in villages downstream, leaving 71 people dead and displacing 14,440 others.
The chairman of the State Inspection Agency, Khamphanh Phommathat, first reported the missing funds in a meeting with National Assembly lawmakers in November.
The previous governor of Attapeu Province, Leth Xayaphone, was transferred to a new post at the Lao Federation of Trade Union in October, according to the Vientiane Times.
Another Attapeu Province official told RFA last week that at least four other provincial officials have been accused of being involved in the misappropriation of the funds.
Resettlement villages
Since 2018, provincial officials have handed out donations and paid out compensation to people from 19 villages who lost their homes and personal possessions, an aid worker who has been working with provincial authorities on the distribution told Radio Free Asia.
There have been five rounds of payments, with a sixth and final payment still pending, the worker said.
But the State Inspection Authority has discovered that 81.22 billion kip (US$4.06 million) of compensation money has been used inappropriately, and there wasn’t proper accounting for expenses of 1.81 billion kip (US$90,500), according to Khamphanh Phommathat.
More than 697 billion kip (US$35 million) compensation still hasn’t been paid to survivors because their properties haven’t been assessed, he told lawmakers.
Vanthong Kongmany’s report this week to the State Inspection Authority was a confirmation that the funds have gone missing.
Khamphanh Phommathat is also the head of the country’s Central Anti-Corruption Agency.
The government has vowed to address corrupt practices that are pervasive in politics and every sector of Laos’ economy.
The State Inspection Authority reported in 2022 that the government had lost US$767 million to corruption since 2016, with government development and investment projects – such as road and bridge construction – the leading source of the widespread graft.
A survivor of the dam collapse told RFA that most families have relocated to resettlement villages where they have received parcels of land that are too small for growing rice and vegetables.
Other survivors told RFA that relocated residents suffered from a water shortage in the relocation villages in 2020.
“We were living in a camp that was very crowded,” one survivor said. “We didn’t even have water in our bathrooms. The camp authorities said that they didn’t have money to install more pumps or to fix the broken pumps.”
Translated by Max Avary. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.