The Second Plenary Session of the 20th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection made arrangements for deepening the rectification of corruption in key areas and resolutely cleaning up industry-wide, systemic, and regional corruption with large risks and hidden dangers. The Chifeng Municipal Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region took the investigation and handling of cases as the first starting point, and took the chaos of expert review as the starting point, followed the line and dug deeply, and seriously investigated and dealt with a series of corruption cases in the field of public resource trading. At present, the investigation of cases is nearing completion, and the work of using cases as a mirror, using cases to promote reform, and using cases to promote governance is being comprehensively promoted.
What are the outstanding manifestations of the violation of discipline and law by the appraisal experts? How to carry out the work of supervising and enforcing discipline, and how to achieve results? How to get the once distorted order of market transactions back on the right track? This reporter interviewed the relevant functional departments of Chifeng City, the bidding agency, the appraisal experts, the responsible persons of enterprises, and other parties involved in the transaction of public resources, as well as the personnel handling the case.
"Whoever spends more money will win the bid"
——The seemingly orderly review site has actually become a gladiatorial arena for interest games
At about 10 o'clock in the morning on April 24, 2022, the website of the Chifeng Municipal Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision issued 6 pieces of information within 10 minutes, informing Liu Chengjun, Wang Zhiyong, and other 6 people, the original evaluation experts of the city's public resource trading expert database, seriously undermined the rules of fair competition in the field of bidding and bidding, harmed the business environment, and are under review and investigation. As soon as the message was issued, it attracted widespread attention.
Expert review is an indispensable part of the city's public resource transaction process. Whether it is a public institution or an enterprise personnel, as a review expert, they exercise the right to evaluate bids in accordance with the duties conferred by the Bidding and Bidding Law. They should uphold the public spirit and judge the advantages and disadvantages of bidding enterprises and bidding plans from a professional point of view, however, in the midst of the heavy "hunting", some experts gave up the bottom line of principles, exchanged "bid evaluation rights" for "foreign wealth", and walked step by step into the abyss of violating discipline and law.
A project from the relevant departments to the bidding enterprise to win the bid, at least three key links in the middle, that is, the bidding agency to produce documents, the public resources trading center to extract experts and expert review. The chaos of public resource transactions is highlighted by the fact that key links have been "lost", and the transaction subjects are "colluded with each other".
Many experts have a wide range of "connections" and "wear many hats". Some of them worked in relevant departments for many years before retirement, and even held leadership positions; some of them participated in bid evaluation, opened bidding agencies, and also acted as "scalpers" to "match" experts and enterprises.
The review experts form their own "circles", with a single "standard", as well as "husband and wife" and "iron triangle". As long as the bidding company finds any person in the circle, the relevant members will quickly gather together to study and manipulate the bid evaluation results. Moreover, there is not always competition between various circles, and sometimes they will communicate and negotiate to select companies with a large winning rate, taking the opportunity to raise the "benefit fee".
In addition, bidding information that seems to be strictly confidential is also easy to be leaked and disclosed in advance. Before the bid opening, each bidder contacts the "scalper" to collect information from other bidders, negotiate the benefit fee, and transmit information to the experts who may participate in the bid evaluation in the circle. On the other hand, once the relevant experts are selected as judges, they will also send "codes" to the "scalpers".
Around the group of bid evaluation experts, tenderers, agencies, enterprises, and "scalpers" form a stable "chain of interests", form a close "circle of friends", and form a huge "information network", the circle leaders collude and manipulate, the main members coordinate the operation, the agency company fuels the fire, the bid evaluation experts lose the bottom line, and the industry enterprises have no choice but to follow up...... The seemingly civilized and orderly review site has actually become a gladiatorial arena for interest games. A number of former review experts confessed after being placed in detention, saying, "Conscience is devoured by greed, loyalty is crushed by money", "The judges are becoming more and more unprincipled, only scoring for money, and whoever spends more money can win the bid."
"The more difficult it is, the more we must rise to it"
-- For two consecutive years, more than 100 discipline inspection and supervision cadres have participated in the investigation and investigation of corruption and work style problems in the field of public resource trading
Since 2022, the Chifeng Municipal Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision has coordinated and dispatched more than 170 discipline inspection and supervision cadres at all levels in the city to strictly investigate and deal with corruption and style problems in the field of public resource trading.
The investigation and mapping work before the formal investigation of the case lasted for a year. "At first, it was the masses who reported many times that caused us to pay attention, and after collecting clues and conducting secret visits, we found that enterprises in the field of public resource trading sent money and experts collected money became a trend. The case-handling staff introduced.
Proceeding from the relevant clues, a number of suspicious experts and projects have surfaced horizontally, and a number of suspicious experts and projects have surfaced; vertically, along the upstream and downstream, the chain of interests of public officials, agencies, enterprises, experts, and "scalpers" has been dug up. In this way, the intertwined "corruption network" in the field of public resource trading has gradually emerged.
"I was nervous when I received the first money, but then everyone may have Xi it, and felt that they were all taking it, and the law did not blame the public, thinking that there would be no problems" "Being selected by the judges, it is as exciting as winning the lottery" "Sometimes I am disappointed that I am not found, I don't know how to evaluate this standard, and who should be given a high score"...... The chaos of expert review is shocking, and some public officials are also involved.
Lu Moumou, a staff member of the Municipal Public Resources Trading Center, accepted hundreds of thousands of yuan in benefits from "scalpers". "I have never seen so much money" He was completely corrupted, so he took advantage of the loopholes such as the electronic screen at the evaluation site of the trading center to display the names of experts 40 minutes before the bid was opened, and transmitted expert information to the "scalpers".
In a very small number of grass-roots departments, the top leaders themselves are not right, meddling in the project to manipulate the bid evaluation results, which has a serious negative impact on team members and cadres. "The upper beam is not right, the lower beam is crooked, and the middle beam is not collapsing", dozens of cadres in relevant departments are suspected of violating discipline and law.
The field of public resource trading involves many subjects and has a wide range of interests. Lifting the lid on the problem and advancing the investigation and handling of the case are facing a lot of pressure. Some discipline inspection and supervision cadres were afraid of difficulties at first, and some were repeatedly threatened by telephone during the investigation of cases. "If left unchecked, this cancer will grow bigger and bigger, affecting not only the fair and just trading order and business environment of a place, but also the political ecology of Chifeng. We have no room or reason to retreat, and the more difficult it is, the more we must rise to the occasion. Sui Li, member of the Standing Committee of the Chifeng Municipal Party Committee, secretary of the Municipal Commission for Discipline Inspection and director of the Supervision Commission, said.
Up to now, more than 700 people have been involved in the field of public resource trading in Chifeng City, involving more than 4.4 billion yuan in the subject matter of the project, and 120 people have been put on file for review and investigation.
"There is a significant increase in market activity"
-- Promote all-round system-wide rectification and reform, and gradually release the effectiveness of rectification
In the two years since the investigation and handling of the case, the Chifeng Municipal Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision has promoted the relevant functional departments to investigate and reform on the one hand, and on the other hand, it has dug deep into the system deficiencies and regulatory loopholes behind the problems, and urged the relevant departments to clarify the boundaries of regulatory responsibilities and promote governance at the source.
"Since the special rectification, we have promoted water conservancy, housing and other departments to hold warning education conferences at important time nodes, and 85 review experts have voluntarily surrendered, forming a strong deterrent. The case-handling staff introduced.
The self-examination and self-correction work of various departments has achieved certain results. The Municipal Water Conservancy Bureau has 35 experts with relevant problems in its self-examination, and the clues have been handed over to the Municipal Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision for further verification. At the beginning of this year, the Municipal Bureau of Housing and Urban-Rural Development completed the assessment of 656 people in the relevant bid evaluation expert database, removed 159 people, and suspended the qualification of 24 people for half-year bid evaluation. In addition, a number of achievements have been made in system building. According to the relevant responsible comrades of the Municipal Financial Investment Review Center, 26 items such as the avoidance system and the evaluation project allocation system have been revised and improved to further standardize the review behavior and compress the artificial operation space.
With the progress of all-round and system-wide rectification work in turn, the rectification efficiency has been gradually released.
According to the staff of a banner (county) Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Bureau, they have counted the bidding and bidding of water-saving high-standard and renovation projects in the past three years. Among them, there will be 5 bids in 2021 and 34 bidding companies, 14 bids in 2022 and 99 bidding companies, and 7 bids in 2023 with 289 bidding companies. ”
The person in charge of a local bidding agency told reporters that he has been engaged in this work for more than 20 years, and the special rectification has severely cracked down on those agency companies with ulterior motives.
An evaluation expert in the field of civil engineering construction bluntly said that she participated in the bid evaluation of a project before the remediation, and found that some experts scored significantly higher in the signing process, and rarely participated in it since then. In her opinion, after the heavy-handed rectification, the relevant personnel have been alerted, the "scalpers" have disappeared, the atmosphere has returned to refreshing, and the bid evaluation work does not need to be disturbed by human feelings. In addition, the hardware conditions of the trading center have been significantly improved, and experts are isolated from agency personnel and supervisors, and on-site blending is almost impossible.
In addition to the physical separation, the CFETS has also upgraded the bid evaluation site, bid evaluation system, and bid evaluation methods. For example, learn the lesson of leaking secrets due to the early display of expert information on the screen at the review site, and change the relevant information to be displayed only after the expert himself is present to sign in, set up abnormal scoring reminders to prevent experts from scoring at will, comprehensively promote remote bid evaluation, and establish cross-provincial bid evaluation cooperation with 39 cities in 22 provinces outside the autonomous region.
"The Party Central Committee's unswerving determination to fight corruption is our strongest backing"
-- Strengthen convictions, deepen cooperation, and continue to promote the governance of corruption in the field of bidding and bidding
Wu Xiaobo, deputy director of the Chifeng Public Resources Trading Center, admitted to reporters that with multiple measures, the problem of collusion of interests of all parties on the surface has basically been eliminated, but it must not be taken lightly. In addition, the current measures are still of limited effect on discovering and solving the possible "overt and covert schemes" and bid-rigging and collusion of enterprises.
"Some time ago, we went to many public resource trading centers to investigate and Xi. In some places, the practice of using big data to analyze and judge the correlation between various participants provides a reference for us to promote our work. Wu Xiaobo said that in the next step, I hope to learn from relevant experience, strengthen the empowerment of science and technology, introduce big data to assist in bid evaluation and analysis system, change electronic management to digital management, intervene in advance, analyze and warn, and combine prevention and control. Some bidding agencies also proposed that the relevant policies and systems for bidding should be further improved to prevent the tendering unit from being both a "referee" and an "athlete" in actual operation.
The reporter learned that not only in Chifeng City, but also in many places across the country discipline inspection and supervision organs on the bidding field of the sword, through the guidance of case handling, the integration of "dare not be corrupt, can not be corrupt, do not want to be corrupt", and promote the bidding field system governance.
The discipline inspection and supervision organs of Dazhou City, Sichuan Province, in coordination with the public security and other departments, have smashed nine bid-rigging and bid-rigging gangs that have been entrenched for many years, and in the past two years, more than 300 public officials who have violated discipline and law in the field of bidding have been investigated and punished. The main responsible comrades of the Dazhou Municipal Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision believe that the governance of problems in the field of bidding must continue to deepen multi-departmental cooperation and build a co-governance pattern. The Dalian Municipal Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision of Liaoning Province has seriously investigated and dealt with a number of typical cases in the field of construction projects, and guided the relevant discipline inspection and supervision teams to carry out special supervision, and promoted the in-depth rectification of violations of bidding agents and illegal acts in the field of bidding.
"Solving the stubborn disease in the field of bidding is not a task of one time and one place, and it is impossible to complete it in one battle. At the critical moment, it is not only our wisdom in struggle, but also our courage in struggle, and we must strengthen our belief in victory, and the Party Central Committee's unswerving determination to fight corruption is our strongest backing. Sui Li said that he will continue to do the "second half of the article" to achieve the unity of the political, disciplinary and social effects of investigating and handling cases, and transform the results of anti-corruption into governance efficiency.
(Source: China Discipline Inspection and Supervision News)