A Chinese flag flies above the statue of a bull in the financial district of Shenzhen, China. In December, a Shenzhen landfill collapsed and triggered a mudslide that killed more than 70 people, destroyed 33 nearby buildings and led to $132 million in economic losses, according to a report released by government investigators on Friday. File Photo by Zhu Difeng/Shutterstock

BEIJING, July 15 (UPI) -- A landslide that killed more than 70 people in China seven months ago was the result of poor management and a lack of supervision, officials said Friday.

Chinese work-safety agency officials also said municipal leaders in Shenzhen were somewhat negligent in facilitating the sequence of events that led to the Dec. 20 slide.


The mudslide resulted from the collapse of a nearby landfill. Authorities have been looking into the cause of the event for months and on Friday issued their final determinations.

Authorities said the collapse and resulting slide was the result of managers' dereliction of duty -- and not natural geologic conditions.

"The construction, operation and management [of the landfill] was extremely haphazard," the investigators' report said, which also blamed the collapse on an improper storage of waste and the lack of an efficient drainage system.

The report also blamed local officials for providing illegal regulatory approvals for the landfill, and called them "deficient in their routine supervisory work."

The investigative report recommended various levels of punishment for three companies and more than 100 executives and officials it deemed responsible. It recommended serious punishment for 53 of them, including potential arrest.

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At least 73 people were killed, according to official statistics, and four are still listed as missing. The disaster destroyed 33 buildings in the surrounding area and ultimately caused more than $130 million in economic damage.

Investigators recommended the license revocation of Shenzhen Yixianglong, the company in charge of the dump site, and that its executives be banned from future executive posts in the industry, the Xinhua news agency reported.

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