Government ministries, agencies and state-funded entities wasted or improperly used about 40 billion yen in taxpayer money in fiscal 2002, the highest amount in 20 years, the Board of Audit said Friday in a report.

The report, submitted to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, says that of the 40 billion yen in 319 cases, 18.8 billion yen involved law violations or inappropriate accounting, especially in the medical field.

In one case of accounting fraud, Okayama University Hospital falsely claimed as much as 6.7 billion yen in expenses for the purchase of medical supplies, the board said.

The state also paid an excess of 3.5 billion yen to medical institutions due to misunderstandings over treatment fees paid to the entities under the public medical insurance system.

The board also found that officials at the Defense Agency, the Finance Ministry, post offices and other government agencies embezzled a total of 1.39 billion yen.

Regarding Japan Highway Public Corp., the board found that some business associations abused the highway operator's toll discount system, which is intended to help heavy users of expressways, such as long-distance buses and trucks.

Some associations were barely related to the transport industry, and as much as 1.5 billion yen of tolls were discounted inappropriately, the board said.

State subsidies worth 4.4 billion yen were not effectively used for their designated purposes, including restructuring and improving the agriculture sector, the report says.

For the second consecutive year, shady accounting was also found in government measures to help the domestic cattle industry deal with mad cow disease. The government wasted 400 million yen on a subsidy scheme to dispose of meat-and-bone meal, believed to be a source of the brain-wasting disease.