Not long ago, the Hangzhou police cracked a case of corruption within a private enterprise. Wang is an operator in the basic position of the e-commerce platform, and he accepted bribes of more than 92 million yuan from merchants in just one year, and the bribery situation can be described as shocking.
An employee of the e-commerce platform accepted bribes of more than 9,200 yuan a year
The stock account of the main suspect in the case, Wang, shows that although the loss is nearly 10 million, the balance in the account is still more than 2,400 yuan, and this is only a small part of Wang's bribes.
According to Wang's confession, he received tens of millions of bribes in about a year, so what did Wang do on this e-commerce platform, and why did someone send him so much money? According to the police, Wang's position in the company is not high, but he has an important approval power.
Qiu Jie, Deputy Captain of the Economic Investigation Brigade of the Yuhang District Bureau of the Hangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau: On the e-commerce platform, he has the authority to approve the store, and after many merchants submit store applications, he has the first check of the preliminary authority.
According to the police, Wang is responsible for the approval of the official flagship store of furniture on this e-commerce platform, and if a furniture manufacturer wants to open an official flagship store on this e-commerce platform, after submitting an application according to the process, the person responsible for approval in the background is Wang.
Ma Jianqiang, Captain of the Economic Investigation Brigade of the Yuhang District Bureau of the Hangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau: Wang's job responsibilities are mainly to screen out good enterprises and partners according to some conditions of the company and enter this platform. If it is not in accordance with the company's regulations, it will lead to a large number of enterprises that do not meet the requirements to settle in, and eventually have a destructive impact on the word-of-mouth image or management system and brand value of the entire company.
With the rapid development of the Internet economy, online shopping has become a consumption habit for many people, in order to adapt to this change, a large number of companies have opened stores from offline to online, but if you want to win the trust of consumers, it is undoubtedly a good choice to open an official flagship store on a large e-commerce platform.
In order to protect the rights and interests of consumers, large e-commerce platforms will strictly screen these merchants who have opened official flagship stores, with the original intention of allowing merchants with guaranteed product quality and after-sales to settle on the platform, so as to improve the credibility of the platform and also check for consumers. However, what Wang, as a gatekeeper, saw not duties and responsibilities, but the so-called "business opportunities" and quickly turned approval into a business.
After investigation, it was found that the number of official flagship stores approved by Wang not only far exceeded the normal level, but also the conditions of many merchants did not meet the requirements of the platform.
Ma Jianqiang, Captain of the Economic Investigation Brigade of the Yuhang District Bureau of the Hangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau: This has caused a kind of unfairness. People have to rely on real business, transaction volume, and brand effect to finally enter the threshold, but the ones he handles are done through money. If left unchecked, it will cause bad money to drive out good money.
Collusion with many people to jointly accept bribes has formed a gray and black industrial chain
In just one year, Wang quickly turned the approval power in his hand into a business of hundreds of millions of yuan, during which he and many people jointly accepted bribes of more than 130 million yuan, of which his own bribes were more than 92 million yuan, and gradually formed a gray and black industrial chain of reselling furniture official flagship store indicators. At this moment, an anonymous report letter received by Wang's e-commerce platform unveiled the tip of the iceberg of this black and gray industry chain.
Ma Jianqiang, Captain of the Economic Investigation Brigade of the Yuhang District Bureau of the Hangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau: There are anonymous reports in the reporting channel set up by the enterprise, naming and saying that this person has problems in a certain business.
Subsequently, the e-commerce platform reported the case to the police, but after a preliminary investigation of Wang, the police did not find relevant evidence. So is the content of this anonymous whistleblower letter true? Soon, the e-commerce platform provided the police with all the approval business information handled by Wang, and after careful combing and analysis, the police who handled the case found clues from it.
Ma Jianqiang, Captain of the Economic Investigation Brigade of the Yuhang District Bureau of the Hangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau: After retrospectively reviewing, it is obviously abnormal, because people who are in the same position as him have the amount of approvals within the normal range, and he is beyond the normal range.
As a result, the police included these official flagship stores of furniture approved by Wang into the line of sight of the investigation, and through investigation and combing, they soon found a large amount of evidence that Wang violated the rules to approve the merchants to settle in and charge the so-called fees. At the same time, in addition to Wang, those involved in the crime also included his relatives and friends and a large number of intermediaries, so that this extraordinarily large criminal network headed by Wang gradually became clear.
Luo Yinfei, police officer of the Economic Investigation Brigade of the Yuhang District Bureau of the Hangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau: He recruited some relatives and friends to recruit middlemen or merchants, and asked them to find merchants who have the need to settle in stores, and then clearly marked the price, for example, a store charges 15 to 200,000 yuan.
Luo is an intermediary under Wang. According to Luo, he runs a furniture factory in Foshan and has opened online stores on many e-commerce platforms, and he and Wang have known each other for many years because of their work.
According to Luo, at that time, the e-commerce platform where Wang worked suddenly became strict about the review of store entry, and many of his peers' applications failed to pass.
Suspect Luo: He told me that he had resources, I tested a store, and he did pass, and I felt that he was indeed capable of doing this.
Wang and Luo hit it off, one was responsible for finding merchants in demand, and the other was responsible for approval, and in order to prevent disputes, Wang and Luo agreed to collect money after the matter was completed every time.
Wang has developed a total of 8 middlemen like Luo, and each middleman will develop his own downline. According to the police, the reason why Wang was able to accept such a huge amount of bribes in a short period of time has a lot to do with the middlemen he developed.
Qiu Jie, Deputy Captain of the Economic Investigation Brigade of the Yuhang District Bureau of the Hangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau: After investigation, we found that a total of more than 400 businesses were approved in violation of regulations, and the amount involved reached 130 million yuan. Wang himself has developed 8 offline lines, and his illegal income has reached more than 9,000 yuan.
The whereabouts of the huge amount of stolen money are a mystery It turned out that there were sufficient preparations before committing the crime
Through in-depth investigation, the police quickly found out the facts of the crime of Wang and others, but when Wang was arrested and searched, the police did not find these huge amounts of stolen money in his home, so where did all the money go?
Through the investigation, the police found that in order to escape the crackdown, Wang made sufficient preparations before committing the crime.
Qiu Jie, deputy captain of the Economic Investigation Brigade of the Yuhang District Bureau of the Hangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau: In the process of collecting money, he did some precautions and evasions. He doesn't collect money directly, and a lot of money is collected through the relevant cards of his friends, classmates, relatives.
In addition to using the accounts of relatives and friends to collect money, in order to prevent the East Window incident, Wang also handed over a large amount of bribe proceeds to a friend for holding and safekeeping. Some of his bribe funds were used to buy a large amount of gold, but what Wang didn't expect was that his friend actually started his idea of these gold.
Ma Jianqiang, Captain of the Economic Investigation Brigade of the Yuhang District Bureau of the Hangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau: In the process of helping him hold the gold on his behalf, due to some other reasons, he was also short of money at that time, so he sold the gold and used it to repay some debts.
In order to prevent the matter from being revealed, Wang's friend also specially purchased a batch of fake gold, intending to get away with it.
Although Wang tried his best to evade the investigation and crackdown of the police, in the end, an anonymous report letter revealed his true form, and in the end it was all in vain. At present, Wang has been prosecuted in accordance with the law on suspicion of accepting bribes by non-state functionaries, and the case is being tried. At the same time, with the detection of the case, this e-commerce platform was also deeply touched, they did not expect that a grassroots operator could accept so many bribes.
At the same time, through the detection of the case, the problems and loopholes in the business approval process of this e-commerce platform have also been fully exposed. With the help of the police's advice, the e-commerce platform redesigned the approval process and used big data technology to analyze and judge to reduce the interference of human factors.
Under the siege of suppliers, the employees involved in the case accepted bribes in the procurement process
According to the police, corruption within the enterprise may occur in all aspects of the company's business, in addition to the investment approval process, procurement and investment links are also high-frequency areas. In December last year, the Beijing police cracked a corruption case within an Internet company, in which Lu, an employee involved in the case, was hunted by a supplier, not only opening the door for the supplier in the procurement process, but also taking advantage of his position to provide a large amount of investment for the other party, causing serious losses to the Internet company.
The report was made by a short video platform company, and the suspect Lu was the head of the company's music content innovation department, and the bribes to Lu were Ma and Kang, the heads of the music suppliers of Lu's company.
Sun Xuekai, Inspector of the Economic Crime Investigation Detachment of the Haidian Branch of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau: Live broadcast users will use some music when editing short videos, and these music requires copyright, and Ma and Kang's companies produce this kind of music. Lu bought the music copyright produced by Ma and Kang, and let other users use it on the company's platform.
However, when Lu's company conducted an internal review, it was found that the settlement of expenses between Lu and the music production company was unreasonable. In addition to the high settlement cost of the project, Lu also approved and agreed to invest 25 million yuan in the music production company involved in the case. However, the music production company operated by Ma and Kang, whether it is qualified or scaled, does not meet the investment requirements of Lu's company.
Due to many abnormal circumstances, Lu's company immediately reported the case to the police. After the police investigation, it was found that Lu was very likely to have taken bribes.
Subsequently, the police arrested three suspects, Lu, Ma, and Kang. After interrogation, more details of the trio's bribery and bribery surfaced.
Sun Xuekai, Inspector of the Economic Crime Investigation Detachment of the Haidian Branch of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau: During the cooperation, they often invited Lu to eat and entertain. After getting acquainted, they learned that Lu was not only the head of the department, but also had a considerable say in the company's foreign investment, so they went even more crazy to corrupt Lu, and finally Lu conspired with them to commit illegal and criminal acts.
The employees involved in the case were arrested on suspicion of accepting bribes from non-state employees
In this case, the criminal suspect Lu was criminally detained by the police on suspicion of accepting bribes from non-state functionaries, and Ma and Kang were criminally detained by the police on suspicion of offering bribes to non-state functionaries, and have now been arrested, and the case is under further investigation.
In recent years, corruption cases have occurred from time to time in private enterprises, and through the analysis of these cases, the police have found some commonalities in such cases.
Hua Liebing, director of the Economic Crime Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security: First, the main body of the crime has special characteristics, and this group is often the middle and high-level of the enterprise, who has the right to manage the enterprise in their hands, and at the same time, they are very familiar with the loopholes and deficiencies in the management of the enterprise in all aspects of the business process. Second, his criminal behavior has a certain degree of concealment, and he often uses the advantages of his position and the asymmetry of information to cover up his criminal behavior, so it is difficult for outsiders to find out.
In order to help more enterprises find and improve loopholes and plug the gaps in corruption cases, the economic investigation department of the Ministry of Public Security has reviewed the cases, analyzed the criminal methods and characteristics, and provided timely feedback to enterprises through risk warnings and risk prevention proposals, so as to help private enterprises establish internal anti-corruption "firewalls".
Hua Liebing, Director of the Economic Crime Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security: More than 10,000 cases of corruption within enterprises will be filed in 2023.
In February 2024, Tencent Group issued a 2023 anti-fraud work notice, and nearly 20 people were transferred to the public security organs for suspected crimes. In March 2024, Douyin Group issued an anti-fraud notice for 2023, and a total of 23 people were transferred to the judicial authorities for suspected violations and crimes.
The economic investigation department of the Ministry of Public Security said that it is of great significance for private enterprises to establish and improve the internal corruption prevention and governance mechanism, and the next step will continue to strengthen the linkage with private enterprises to form a joint force against corruption.
In 2023, more than 10,000 cases of internal corruption in private enterprises were filed by public security organs across the country, which not only effectively protected the legitimate rights and interests of private enterprises, but also maintained the market order of fair competition. To crack down on corruption within private enterprises, it is necessary to form a joint force to show the sword in a timely manner, optimize the business environment, and promote sustained and healthy economic and social development.
(CCTV reporter Zhang Libin, Liu Jianhui, Wang Zuyan, Wang Sisi)
Source: CCTV News