Netizen Uncovers More Corruption in China’s Ongoing Train Ticket Scandal

China’s Railway Ministry is notorious for corruption, so much so that the former minister was sacked for corruption in 2011. Since then, unfortunately, the Ministry hasn’t done much to improve its image and recently, complaints about the horribly-designed online ticket sales website the Ministry just “upgraded” have begun to give way to questions about how the Ministry could have spent so much money (the site cost more than $52 million) and come out with such a terrible product. (The fact that IBM and Cisco both submitted bids and were rejected hasn’t helped matters much).

The assumed explanation is corruption, and in digging for some, one netizen apparently stumbled across an interesting realization. At the time it was inviting bids, the director of the Railway Ministry IT Center — which was the organization responsible for running the bidding process for the website — was Wu Jianzhong. Wu is perhaps best known for having been discovered to be holding executive level positions at around 15 different companies simultaneously while holding his public office at the Railway Ministry. He left his position with the Ministry in 2011 or early 2012, but may still be holding a position as Party secretary for the IT Center.

In any event, public officials looking to hold posts at private companies in addition to their public jobs must apply for permission, and are forbidden from using the double-posts (or in Wu’s case, the more than a dozen posts) to give themselves and the private companies they represent competitive advantages. It’s not clear what role Wu’s connections may have played in the bidding process for the 12306 website, but his companies have definitely participated in other Railway Ministry projects. That said, it’s still unclear whether there has been wrongdoing, as the Ministry’s IT Center is a shareholder in many of the companies Wu runs.

As if a broken website and mounting questions about corruption weren’t enough, the Ministry’s 12306 site is also apparently being imitated by scammers and phishers using the Ministry’s name to trick people out of their money. Unfortunately, though, the phishing sites aren’t exact copies of the Ministry’s 12306.cn because unlike the real 12306.cn, they actually work.

Burn.