□ Zhang Chong, all-media reporter of the Rule of Law Daily
□ Correspondent He Qiwei
Taking advantage of the state's welfare policy of exempting high-speed transportation fees from "cross-regional operation certificates for agricultural machinery" and "cross-regional operations" of agricultural machinery and implementing "cross-regional sales" to evade payment, although it evades tolls, it constitutes the crime of fraud.
On February 24, the court held a hearing on a series of highway fee evasion fraud cases filed by the People's Procuratorate of Longfeng District, Daqing City, Heilongjiang Province, against Zhuang X and 28 others.
Under the guise of cross-regional operation of agricultural machinery
In fact, cross-regional sales evade payment
On November 27, 2020, the Daqing Municipal Public Security Bureau found that there was a fraud in fee evasion in thousands of messages on the transportation of agricultural machinery vehicles through the Daqing regional toll station from May to October 2020 pushed by the Heilongjiang Provincial Expressway Administration. On December 4 of the same year, the public security sub-bureaus of Daqing City also accepted the "1009 Project" clues transferred by the Criminal Investigation Detachment of the Daqing Municipal Public Security Bureau. After the case is filed, the public security organs employ compulsory measures of release on guarantee pending further investigation against the suspects involved in the case.
On December 11, 2020, the People's Procuratorate of Longfeng District of Daqing City held a meeting with the Daqing Municipal Public Security Bureau, Longfeng Branch, Wolitun Branch, and Dongguang Branch on the "1009 Expressway Fee Evasion Fraud Project" and put forward supplementary investigation opinions. From December 18 to 21 of the same year, in order to ensure that each case met the standard of credible and sufficient evidence, the court docked cases with the three sub-bureaus in the jurisdiction and intervened in advance to guide the direction of investigation. From December 21 to 23 of the same year, the "1009 Highway Fee Evasion Fraud Project" was successively transferred for review and prosecution.
According to the investigation by the procurator handling the case of the Longfeng District Procuratorate, between May and October 2020, 32 truck owners, including criminal suspect Zhuang X, who knew that they did not meet the conditions for free transportation of agricultural machinery, purchased and used false cross-district operation certificates, agricultural machinery license plates and agricultural machinery driving licenses in order to evade high-speed tolls, drove trailers to transport new harvesters or second-hand harvesters and other agricultural machinery, and drove trailers to the Daguang Expressway Longfeng Toll Station and Yingge Toll Station in daqing district of Heilongjiang Province, and did not pay high-speed tolls. The total amount is as high as more than 500,000 yuan, and its behavior is suspected of constituting the crime of fraud.
Originally, the "cross-regional operation certificate of agricultural machinery" was the certificate and basis for the state to implement the policy-oriented reduction and reduction of vehicle tolls in order to ensure the cross-regional operation of large-scale agricultural machinery and tools nationwide, and to solve the dilemma of "organic work without work" and "difficulty in finding work". This gang of people evaded expenses mainly under the guise of cross-regional operations of agricultural machinery and tools, and did the actual evasion of fees, and engaged in "cross-regional sales" trading.
There are loopholes in highway management
Incidents of evasion of high-speed fees are frequent
Through interrogation, the procurator in charge learned that the reason for committing the crime was almost always because of the psychology of taking advantage of the small. Most of them were first-time offenders and occasional offenders, and all expressed regret, and the procurator communicated with the defendant many times in response to this situation, guided the defendant to return the compensation, and did his best to recover economic losses for the country. At present, all the cases have been reviewed and concluded, of which 4 people have been treated as relatively non-prosecution, and the remaining 28 have recommended that the court apply probation.
Although the case has been concluded in the procuratorial process, the procurator handling the case has learned that this phenomenon of cheating high-speed fees is not an isolated case. It is understood that in 2020, the procuratorates in other jurisdictions in Daqing handled a total of 252 cases of highway evasion fraud for truck owners, and the unpaid high-speed tolls reached more than 6 million yuan, causing major economic losses to the country.
"The occurrence of such cases reflects the problems of irregular implementation of business procedures by high-speed management departments and personnel, inadequate supervision of exemption from high-speed fees, and weak sense of responsibility of relevant staff." According to Wang Fang, deputy chief procurator of the Longfeng District Procuratorate, while filing a public prosecution with the court, the procurator handling the case also proceeded from cracking down on and preventing crime, strengthening industry supervision, and ensuring the national economic order.
Wang Fang said that the hospital investigated, verified, and analyzed the reasons and problems in the high incidence of such illegal and criminal cases, and found that the photos of the "Operation Certificate" uploaded to the inspection information record table, the photos of the front, tail, and loading of the harvester transport vehicle could not clearly show the correspondence between the "Operation Certificate" and the combine harvester, and some freight drivers pulled and transported multiple combine harvesters to provide only one "Operation Certificate" for free passage, and the staff did not fulfill the duty of standardized inspection, photography, and uploading a complete set of documents Some staff believe that evading high-speed tolls is an individual incident and has not attracted enough attention, which also reflects the problem that the highway staff has not standardized the implementation of business procedures and inspection standards, the internal supervision mechanism of the unit and the inspection and review mechanism of the toll station are all in the form, and the sense of responsibility of the practitioners is not strong, and the legal awareness is weak.
The Longfeng District Procuratorate issued recommendations
In order to block the high-speed evasion of fees
In order to plug the loopholes in the management of the expressway in a timely manner, the procurator in charge of the highway conscientiously understood the relevant provisions on the management of highway tolls, and on the basis of repeated in-depth investigation and understanding with the unit where the case occurred, drafted a procuratorial recommendation.
The procuratorate of Longfeng District of Daqing City organized a procuratorial committee to discuss the procuratorial recommendations article by article, and extended to other green vehicles such as transporting fresh agricultural products, striving to be comprehensive, accurate and feasible, and finally from the problems found that there were "irregular implementation of relevant business regulations, inadequate supervision of the exemption of high-speed fees, and weak sense of responsibility of relevant staff", it was determined to "carry out comparative inspection of normative documents, improve the implementation of internal supervision mechanisms, carry out education and training of practitioners, and increase publicity to promote standardized passage" and other issues. Four targeted and actionable recommendations.
On February 5, the Longfeng District Procuratorate invited the leaders of the Daqing Career Development Center of the Daguang Expressway to the Longfeng District Procuratorate to hold a discussion and exchange, and announced the delivery of the procuratorial proposal on the spot.
Wang Fang said: "Optimizing the business environment, the rule of law is a key link, the negligence of highway toll supervision is easy to give the outside world the impression of 'Daqing evasion is convenient', and the industry chaos directly reduces our social governance level, which is detrimental to Daqing's urban image and business environment." ”
At the scene where the procuratorial suggestions were delivered, Wang Fang suggested that the high-speed management department should, in accordance with the consensus reached at the symposium, do a good job in implementation and supervision, plug the management loopholes, adhere to the law and regulations, collect as much as possible, manage the country's "road maintenance money", ensure Daqing transportation, and serve Daqing's economy and society to achieve high-quality development.
Source: Rule of Law Daily - Legal Network