Behind the "post-95" embezzlement of 70 million
Reporter/Zhou Qunfeng
Published in China News Weekly on July 12, 2021, No. 1003
Recently, in a judicial auction conducted by the Intermediate People's Court of Chuzhou City, Anhui Province, a game card with a starting price of 80 yuan was speculated to more than 87 million yuan, and the auction was immediately stopped by the court. The original owner of the card was a "post-95" named Zhang Yujie.
When Zhang Yujie worked in the Transaction Management Section of the Chuzhou Real Estate Registration Center, he embezzled nearly 70 million yuan. The reasons why the card was sold to a sky-high price and auctioned, as well as its path to corruption, have attracted much attention. In a number of judicial documents obtained by China News Weekly, the testimony of Zhang Yujie himself and many former colleagues shows that Zhang Yujie joined the unit at the age of 19, resigned at the age of 24, was detained the following year, and sentenced to life imprisonment at the end of 2020.
In recent years, there have been cases of post-90s corruption in many places. A case-handling personnel of the Discipline Inspection Commission told China News Weekly that judging from some real cases that he personally investigated and handled and learned about, behind the corruption of some young public officials, there are often problems such as online gambling, embezzlement of public funds, and online games. "Their characteristics of not being deeply involved in the world, consuming ahead of time, and admiring vanity are more distinct."
Embezzle escrow funds paid by buyers
At 16:00 on June 21, on the Ali auction platform, the Chuzhou Intermediate Court began to conduct a judicial auction for a game card. The card named "Game King Blue-Eyed White Dragon Gold Card" has a starting price of 80 yuan, a deposit of 100 yuan, and a mark-up of 1 yuan per time. After going online, in less than 5 minutes, it attracted tens of thousands of people to watch. At 16:32, after the bidder "Y8745" raised the price to 87.326098 million yuan, the auction was urgently stopped by the Chuzhou Intermediate Court, on the grounds that "the lot was seriously inconsistent with the actual auction price, and there may be malicious speculation and bidding behavior".
On July 5, China News Weekly found on the Alibaba auction platform that the auction status was "suspended", with a total of 18,104 applicants and about 2.6 million onlookers.
"Blue-Eyed White Dragon" is a classic card in the Japanese manga King of Games. The cards auctioned are pure gold cards for the 20th anniversary edition officially issued by KONAMI in 2019, and the material is about 11g of 24K gold. According to the recent transaction price of Japanese auction websites, the market value is estimated at 200,000 yuan to 300,000 yuan.
((Screenshot of the webpage) The "Game King Blue-Eyed Dragon Gold Card" was suspended from auction. )
The Chuzhou Intermediate Court only gave a starting price of 80 yuan, which was related to the lack of supporting documents for the card. On the auction platform, the card was embedded in a black photo frame, and the Chuzhou Intermediate Court specifically reminded the bidders in the text description that "the card has an unknown service life, has not been used for a long time, does not have any accessories and instructions, and the authenticity of the brand is unknown, for reference only."
The original owner of the card is Zhang Yujie, born on March 23, 1995, from Chuzhou City, Anhui Province. Relevant judicial documents show that on June 24, 2014, 19-year-old Zhang Yujie signed an employment and labor contract with the Chuzhou Labor Cooperation Center, and was dispatched to the Chuzhou Real Estate Transaction Supervision Office a week later. On March 5, 2015, the supervision office was renamed as Chuzhou Real Estate Registration Center, and was entrusted by the Chuzhou Municipal Land Resources and Real Estate Administration Bureau to handle real estate registration services and real estate registration management information.
Zhang Yujie served as a staff member of the "stock housing fund custody" in the unit. Zhang Yujie said in his testimony that he was mainly responsible for handling the custody business of existing housing funds, specifically receiving and reviewing materials, entering information into the existing housing custody system, collecting housing purchase payments, and issuing existing housing fund custody vouchers and withdrawal vouchers.
In April 2019, Zhang Yujie resigned, and on February 27, 2020, he was arrested and arrested. On November 16 of the same year, he was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Chuzhou Intermediate People's Court and confiscated all personal property. The Chuzhou Intermediate People's Court held that during his work on the job, he directly embezzled 69.9325 million yuan of public funds by falsifying the facts of collection and other means, which was used for his consumption and squandering and payment for the cost of buying a house.
Most of the above-mentioned funds embezzled by Zhang Yujie are custody funds paid by buyers. The public prosecution organ found that between 2016 and April 2019, he fabricated the reason why the credit card needed to be cashed out, and through consultation with the buyer and the personnel of the real estate intermediary company, asked the buyer to transfer the escrow funds that should have been paid to a bank account in Chuzhou City to the bank account of his individual and his then girlfriend Tan xxx, or let the buyer directly hand over the cash to himself, and after issuing the custody voucher to the buyer, he did not record the above money, and directly appropriated the above money for himself. After the completion of the housing transaction, according to the fund custody voucher issued by Zhang Yujie, the relevant amount was paid from the unit account to the seller, and after the audit, it was found that Zhang Yujie embezzled a total of 62.8875 million yuan of custody funds paid by 399 buyers.
In addition, the court also found that in January 2019, Zhang Yujie, in the name of his then-girlfriend Zhou XX, purchased a house located in the Huayuan Community of Chuzhou City from Fan XX, and in the case of non-payment of the purchase price, the Chuzhou Real Estate Registration Center paid Fan XX 2.6 million yuan for the purchase of the house according to the false custody voucher issued by Zhang Yujie. A month later, he embezzled 3.9 million yuan of escrow funds by similar means. From December 2016 to February 2017, Zhang Yujie took advantage of his position to embezzle 545,000 yuan of escrow funds by means of repeatedly printed POS machine receipt vouchers after receiving the escrow funds for stock housing transactions, and actually did not pay the funds into the unit account.
An insider familiar with Zhang Yujie's former leader told China News Weekly that after Zhang Yujie was arrested, he was very cooperative with the investigation. But its pursuit of enjoyment, profligacy, when its property was seized, there were only some gold and silver jewelry, watches, gamepads and so on. The judgment also shows that on February 27, 2020, after Zhang Yujie was arrested and arrested, he truthfully confessed the fact that he embezzled escrow funds, and the investigation authorities seized two properties in Chuzhou and one property in Shenzhen. "At the time of the crime, the court sealed and seized some of the money and property, and most of the property could not be recovered."
Special chapter "Use it directly when you need it"
China News Weekly learned that at present, two former leaders of Zhang Yujie have been investigated and punished for dereliction of duty: on April 1, 2021, Sun Tao, then head of the department, was sentenced to three years and six months in prison in the first instance. On January 8, 2021, Zhao Yuan, then deputy section chief, was indicted.
Sun Tao's defense lawyer, Chen Chuanjie, told China News Weekly that Sun Tao worked in the archives of the Chuzhou Real Estate Registration Center and was temporarily in charge of the transaction management section of the center in 2016. Soon after she took office, she found that the management of the department's accounts was chaotic, and reported to the director of the center, Zhou Likai, asking for the establishment of a full-time accountant in the department and improving the financial system, but it did not attract the attention of the leaders.
(Zhang Yi: Born in 1992, the amount involved was more than 400,000 yuan, and he was sentenced to one year and six months in prison in 2018.) )
In a testimony obtained by Zhang Yujie obtained by China News Weekly, he said that during the work of the department, the special seals for the custody of funds in the stock housing were placed in the drawer at the front desk of the fund custody window, and those who needed to use the seals directly could use the seals directly when they issued the fund custody vouchers. There are no relevant approval procedures for the use of the seal in the process of using the seal, and Sun Tao has never clearly put forward any requirements for the use of the special seal for the custody of the existing housing funds. At the time of his crime, Sun Tao and others never checked the data of the fund custody system with him, and if they checked, they would definitely find the fact that they had embezzled the custody funds. Because the account balance in the stock housing fund custody system is the data that should be true, and the embezzled escrow funds are not deposited into the bank account, with the increase in the number of crimes (the number of times), the account balance in the stock housing fund custody system is more and more obvious than the bank account balance.
In fact, there are early signs of the crime. Jin Fei's testimony said that during his tenure as president of the Chengnan branch of the Bank of China, he had business dealings with the Chuzhou Real Estate Registration Center on the custody of existing housing funds. Around October 2017, Sun Tao contacted him and said that the balance displayed on the account of the fund custody system was more than 30 million yuan more than the bank account, and asked him to check it. Jin Fei first looked for Tan Hui (accountant of the Transaction Management Section of Chuzhou Real Estate Registration Center) to compare the manual account and found that the accounting account and the bank account were consistent. I also checked the fund custody system and found that the system had a beginning balance of more than 30 million yuan, and it did not know the specific reason. At the end of 2017, Wu Xiaoli (chief engineer of Chuzhou Housing and Construction Bureau) convened a meeting with Chen Bin (deputy director of Chuzhou Real Estate Registration Center), Sun Tao, Zhao Yuan (deputy chief of the transaction management section of Chuzhou Real Estate Registration Center), Tan Hui and others, asked for reconciliation, and asked banks to cooperate with the center.
Chen Chuanjie told China News Weekly that regarding the above-mentioned virtual funds of more than 30 million yuan, the director of the Chuzhou Municipal Housing and Construction Bureau had arranged for the chief engineer of the bureau to investigate the matter. Later, a leader of the Chuzhou Real Estate Registration Center reported to the director that there was no problem after checking, resulting in the closure of the matter. On June 4 this year, the second-instance trial of Sun Tao's case was held, and no verdict has yet been pronounced, and Sun Tao's request to supplement the appeal opinion at the second-instance trial was to "admit guilt and be lenient."
Vigilance against "micro-corruption" turning into "big corruption"
Zhang Yujie's case is not an isolated case, and in recent years, a number of post-90s corruption cases have entered the public eye. They are generally in low positions, and many have embarked on the road of corruption within a year or two of their work. Many people work in taxation, social security, finance and other capital-intensive units, serving in finance, cashier and other positions. Behind their corruption, there is often a purpose to play online games, gamble online or buy luxury goods.
Judging from the amount of money involved, some post-90s corruption cases are more "small greed". According to the criminal judgment published on the China Judgment Documents Network, Luo Qinzhu, born in 1992, was a tax co-tax officer of the State Taxation Bureau in Chengdu High-tech Zone. Between April 2016 and April 2017, he illegally helped others increase the number of invoices approved by new enterprises such as building materials commerce and trade, and helped others to approve card changes in violation of regulations, accepting bribes totaling more than 270,000 yuan. In 2017, Luo was sentenced to three years in prison.
(Wang Hongmei: Born in 1990, the amount involved is more than 15 million yuan, and he was sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2018.) )
However, in some key positions, there will also be "big greed". The website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the State Supervision Commission has disclosed that Ji Mou, a former accountant at malkang People's Hospital in Sichuan Province, embezzled public funds after only two years of participating in the work, and by the time of the 2019 case, the 27-year-old had embezzled 5.471 million yuan of public funds.
There are also a number of "post-90s" who have been knocked down by luxury goods. Tian Qihao, a former staff member of the real estate trading window of the Yuhang Branch Center of the Yuhang District Civic Center in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, was born in 1995, and between January and December 2019 alone, he embezzled 5.95 million yuan of state property for luxury consumption, the purchase of luxury cars and online game recharge; Wang Xue, a former cashier of a retired cadre recuperation center in Dongcheng District, Beijing, born in 1990, embezzled and defrauded more than 7.2 million yuan of public funds for his personal luxury consumption, such as a piece of clothing of 64,000 yuan and a package of more than 200,000 yuan. In December 2019, Wang Xue was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Mao Zhaohui, executive director of the China Supervision Society and director of the Anti-Corruption and Integrity Policy Research Center at Chinese Min University, told China News Weekly that there are differences between the corruption cases of young cadres and previous corruption cases. In the past, most of the traditional corruption represented by money and power transactions, now young cadres are more skilled in the use of scientific and technological products, intelligent tools, etc., because of addiction to online games, online tips, online gambling and lead to corruption cases from time to time. "The corruption of many young cadres has the characteristics of intertwining two forms of traditional corruption and new types of corruption."
Mao Zhaohui said that the reasons for young public officials to embark on the road of corruption are manifold: some of them themselves have vicious habits such as gambling, addiction to online games, and love of luxury goods, and they cannot resist temptation; some of them have worked hard for a period of time and think that promotion is hopeless, so they change from the pursuit of career to the acquisition of money; some also have a relationship with the destruction of the political ecology of work units, especially after they see that the main leaders in the units have corrupt behavior, but they have not been investigated and punished in time, which has a potential psychological impact.
"China Discipline Inspection and Supervision News" once reported that Wang Hongmei, a post-90s cashier of the Finance Bureau of the Weaving Gold Economic Development Zone in Bijie City, Guizhou Province, transferred more than 15 million yuan from the unit public fund account to his own account more than 50 times from January 2016 to April 2017 to win the favor of her boyfriend, for the purchase of lottery tickets and personal consumption. According to Wang Hongmei's account, there was a "negative example" of her mistakes, and the "negative example" was Tan Jianfa, the former director of the bureau. Tan repeatedly borrowed a lot of cash from the cashier, and at the end of the year, he asked the cashier to inflate his office expenses to smooth out the loan. Once, Tan Jianfa actually instructed her to privately engrave the official seal of a neighborhood committee. "At that moment, I learned that the official seal could be forged in other ways, which provided a 'reference' for me to use the fake official seal when I later made fake bills." Wang Hongmei said.
An official in charge of the investigation of the case by the Discipline Inspection Commission of a county in a certain western province told China News Weekly that some young cadres who have a problem of corruption have distinct characteristics of not being deeply involved in the world, consuming ahead of time, and admiring vanity. "After being investigated, they all regretted it, but it was too late."
(Tian Qihao: Born in 1995, the amount involved was 5.95 million yuan, and he was arrested in March 2020.) )
Wang Minggao, president of the Hunan Provincial Huaxia Integrity Culture Research Association, said in an interview with China News Weekly that there are some cases of corruption in each age group, and judging from some cases currently disclosed, it is not possible to draw the conclusion that corruption is young, but the anti-corruption education and supervision of young cadres who have just taken up their jobs deserve attention.
He believes that from the relevant cases, they have just taken up their jobs, and many people are working in grass-roots units such as townships and communities, and their positions are not high, and they are all "micro-corruption" at the beginning. Now that the market economy is developed, they are subject to more external temptations, and they are also facing the needs of house purchase, marriage and childbirth, etc., so the pursuit of materials is relatively high, and once there is an inducement, it is easy to corrupt. Supervision and education should be strengthened for them, otherwise, "micro-corruption" will gradually become "big corruption".
Zhang Nanjing, former director of the Public Prosecution Department of the Jiaozuo City People's Procuratorate in Henan Province, has been retired for many years, and when he was in office, he found that some young cadres around him had signs of corruption, but they were not stopped in time, and some of them continued to work "with illness" or even "with illness" to promote, and had been corrupt for many years when they fell from power.
Zhang Nanjing said that talking about the corruption of young cadres is a painful topic, and many of them are very capable, and it is deplorable that corruption has ruined their personal future early. "A former prosecutor with a double bachelor's degree in our unit was only in his 30s when he was sentenced."
In the face of the constant emergence of cases of corruption among young cadres, Zhang Nanjing believes that in order to curb the development of this trend, great efforts must be made to comprehensively deal with it, otherwise it may affect the next generation, or even the next generation. Relying solely on punishing corrupt cadres after the 80s and 90s is far from enough, and the symptoms are not cured. The post-00s generation is also about to enter the workplace, and the corresponding integrity education should also be strengthened.
Wang Minggao found that for a long time, the training of young cadres in many places has become a form. There are also some young cadres themselves who do not attach importance to this kind of honest government education, and even dislike it. It is necessary to intensify the education of young cadres on honest administration and to be targeted, especially to intensify the education of young cadres in charge of people, property, and property. It is also necessary to improve the daily supervision and supervision mechanism, identify risk points, and carry out targeted risk prevention and control.
Mao Zhaohui told China News Weekly that in some places, the selection and assessment of young cadres now pay too much attention to academic qualifications and work performance, and neglect to pay attention to their psychological state. In the future, we should also strengthen supervision and concern for them, and once signs of corruption are discovered, they should be dealt with in a timely manner and immediately corrected.