A granary in Xinzheng City, Henan Province. Photo/Xinhua
Reporter/Xu Dawei
Since 2020, the Yizheng Municipal Court in Jiangsu Province has intensively pronounced a number of corruption cases of grass-roots grain station managers, and lifted the lid on the "collapse of corruption" in the local grass-roots food system in Yizheng.
Zhou Jianhua, director of the Fifth Review and Investigation Office of the Discipline Inspection Commission of Yizheng City, Jiangsu Province, recently introduced that 14 of the city's 15 grass-roots grain stations were investigated and punished for violating discipline and law, of which 5 were transferred for examination and prosecution. These webmasters involved in the case have common timing, similar means of committing crimes and criminal facts. Judging from the cases investigated and handled, falsely reporting the amount of grain is one of the main means of corruption.
Recently, a number of cases of corruption in the food system have been reported across the country, which have aroused social concern. Hu Chunyan, a professor in the Department of Public Administration of the School of Public Administration of Central South University, told China News Weekly that the current case of "corruption in the granary" shows that corrupt behavior runs through all aspects of grain reserve management, and there are arbitrage subsidies and false reports in the purchase and sale links; there are fraudulent, encroached upon, or misappropriated special funds in the supply links; and in the grain storage links, there are phenomena such as collusion between officials and businessmen and reselling.
The corrupt tricks of the "silverfish" in the grain depot
In May 2019, a theft occurred in Qingshen County, Meishan City, Sichuan Province. 430 tons of rapeseed oil stored in the oil depot of Qingshen County National Grain Management Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Qingshen County National Grain Company") were stolen, worth more than 3.14 million yuan, and liu Mouxing, the custodian of the oil depot, guarded and stole it. The case was quickly solved, but the theft eventually led to a corruption case involving 13 people who violated discipline and the law, involving more than 4.4 million yuan in the food system.
In April 2020, during a search for evidence, investigators seized a company's account books, and the Qingshen County National Grain Company corruption nest case immediately surfaced. Writing this account book is Guo Xiuqun, the former deputy general manager of the company and the head of the financial section. Wen Wen, a member of the Qingshen County Supervisory Commission, previously revealed that at the behest of Tao Yonghong, general manager of the Qingshen County State Grain Company, Guo Xiuqun had already destroyed the accounts before 2016. And this account book is Guo Xiuqun's "back hand" left for himself.
According to the criminal judgment of the Qingshen County Court of Sichuan Province "(2020) Chuan 1425 Xingchu No. 31", between 2014 and 2018, Tao Yonghong, as the general manager of Qingshen County National Grain Company, instructed Guo Xiuqun, then chief of the company's financial section, to take advantage of his respective positions in the process of rice rotation business to take advantage of his position to obtain more than 880,000 yuan of public property by means of interception and fraud, which Guo Xiuqun listed as the company's off-the-books funds for safekeeping. During this period, the two defendants jointly embezzled 330,000 yuan of the company's off-the-books funds, and Tao Yonghong personally embezzled 103,400 yuan of the company's off-the-books funds. This case of corruption nests that occurred in the county national grain company is quite typical, exposing the three corrupt tricks of the "silverfish" of the state-owned grain depot: taking the old as the new, empty in and out, and falsely reporting losses.
At the end of 2016, Li Mou, a grain merchant in Meishan, Sichuan, found Tao Yonghong and hoped to buy a batch of medium grain stored on behalf of Qingshen County National Grain Company. At the recommendation of Tao Yonghong, the grain merchant purchased 1276 tons of medium grain storage at a price of 2300 yuan per ton. After the completion of the old grain trade, Tao Yonghong took advantage of his position to purchase more than 896 tons of rice from the grain merchant at a new grain price of 2,760 yuan per ton in the process of rotating into the county-level reserve rice. In this operation of "using old grain as new grain", Tao Yonghong took advantage of the price difference between new and old grain to withdraw 200,000 yuan of state-owned funds at one time.
In November 2017, Qingshen County State Grain Company operated the round-in and out of 1,047 tons of municipal reserve grain in accordance with the "empty in and empty out". Tao Yonghong arranged for Guo Xiuqun to make a false sales contract, and Qingshen National Grain Company sold 1,047 tons of municipal reserve grain to Sichuan Luyan Company at a price of 2,460 yuan per ton. In fact, as early as the end of 2016, Tao Yonghong had pulled 938.5 tons of the 1047 tons of municipal grain reserves to the Qinglong Grain Depot in Pengshan District in the name of medium grain storage, and the remaining 102.537 tons and the 938.5 tons of The No. 3 warehouse of Xilongku were put into storage in the name of new grain of 2760 yuan per ton, thus taking 312,311 yuan. The purpose of forging grain and oil purchase and sale contracts is to cover up the fact that rice is "empty in and empty out."
In 2018, Tao Yonghong repeated the same technique again. When 3100 tons of county-level reserve grain were rotated, Sichuan Luyan Company won the bid at a price of 1962.58 yuan per ton. Of these, 349 tons of rice were put into storage as new grain at a price of 2,720 yuan per ton in 2017. Tao Yonghong asked Sichuan Luyan Company to first pay the winning bid of 3100 tons of rice to Qingshen National Grain Company, and then arranged for Guo Xiuqun to refund the 349 tons of rice that had been put into storage according to the winning bid price plus 3% of the transaction fee and 40 yuan / ton of the warehouse fee, and the difference in bid was 229,800 yuan.
In the process of grain depot management, the grain depot shall rotate the reserve grain on a regular basis. According to the regulations on the storage period of grain and oil, in the area south of the Yangtze River, rice is 2 to 3 years and wheat is 3 to 4 years; in the area north of the Yangtze River, rice is 2 to 3 years and wheat is 3 to 5 years. At the time of rotation, the old grain is sold and the new grain is purchased. The market price of old grain is low, and the market price of new grain is high, and Tao Yonghong and others have adopted methods such as "treating the old as the new" and "shoddy" in the process of grain rotation to earn the difference in grain prices. This method of operation is also known as "circle grain".
There are two main criteria for determining "grain in a circle": First, the purchase or rotation of grain into the warehouse has not fulfilled the requirement that "it must be the grain newly harvested in the current year" and has passed off old grain as new grain; second, the policy-oriented grain collection and storage points or reserve grain storage enterprises have deliberately obtained the new and old price difference through the storage of old grain and arbitrage funds. Enterprises usually obtain improper benefits by means of false purchases and false sales, purchase of old and new, and unroeded rotation in the process of rotating grain reserves, such as not moving inventories, rotating books or rotating inventories and books at the same time. Although "circle grain" is very hidden, it is not uncommon. From 2016 to 2019, a total of 12 grain stations in Yizheng City participated in the "circle" more than 20 times. In 2015, individual grain depots in Liaoning and Jilin provinces were also exposed to the use of old grain to top new grain in the process of policy-oriented grain collection, storage and sales, and arbitrage of price difference subsidies.
Another common means of corruption is false reporting of attrition. In the corruption case of Qingshen County National Grain Company, between 2014 and 2016, Tao Yonghong and Guo Xiuqun used fabricated false information to arbitrage funds of 180,000 yuan during the rice rotation period, using the difference between rotation and rotation and the surplus caused by attrition. At the end of 2016, Tao Yonghong agreed with the grain merchants on a rice rotation to produce a loss of 61 tons, but in fact only about 6 tons were lost, resulting in a surplus of 54.8 tons. Tao Yonghong arranged to purchase these surplus rice grains again in the name of new grain at 2760 yuan per ton. After this wave of operations, Tao Yonghong "easily" arbitraged 150,000 yuan of state-owned funds. In fact, in the process of buying and selling new and old grain and rotating out, it is difficult to avoid certain grain losses, but the losses are controllable. The warehouse manager of a grain depot of the Qingshen County State Grain Company frankly said that the maximum grain loss limit is 3%, and as long as it is managed a little better, the loss can be controlled within 1%.
Zhang Malin, a professor at the Law School of Southeast University, told China News Weekly that the operation methods of corruption in grain depots have a certain degree of concealment, and these "giant rats" often use loopholes in the mechanism to seek huge profits, so it is necessary to improve the relevant risk prevention and control mechanism.
Regulatory loopholes for delegated libraries
Located in Mingguang City, Anhui Province, the Mingguang Osmanthus Harvesting And storage depot is subordinate to the Anqing Directly Subordinate Treasury of China Grain Storage. From August 2014 to December 2017, Chen Weiguo, the former head of the Mingguang Guihua Collection and Storage Depot and a surveyor, took advantage of his position to collude with others to defraud more than 1.314 million yuan of state grain purchase funds by falsely issuing settlement vouchers and inflating the weight of grain, of which Chen Weiguo received more than 474,000 yuan.
In late November 2015, grain merchant Ji proposed to Chen Weiguo that he could inflate the weight of grain when he delivered grain, and promised to pay Chen Weiguo all the funds for the purchase of state grain that he had fraudulently obtained. After that, Chen Weiguo inflated the weight of the 27 truckloads of grain sold by Ji to the Osmanthus Warehouse, ranging from 3 tons to 9 tons per car, deducted water miscellaneous, inflated the settlement weight of grain by a total of 107.6 tons, and the unit price per ton was 2760 yuan, defrauding the state grain purchase funds of 297,100 yuan, and Chen Weiguo received 244,000 yuan. At the same time, Chen Weiguo concocted in accordance with the law, and when the grain merchants surnamed Zhao collected and sold 7 truckloads of grain to the Osmanthus storage depot, each vehicle was inflated according to the gross weight of 4 tons, and the gross weight was inflated by a total of 28 tons of grain. After deducting the water miscellaneous, the inflated grain settlement weight was 26.144 tons, with a unit price of 2760 yuan per ton, and the state grain purchase funds were defrauded of more than 70,000 yuan.
Not only inflating the weight, Chen Weiguo also made a fictitious transaction. On the grounds that the unit needed to solve the work expenses, he found someone to provide several copies of id cards and bank cards, and falsely opened 4 vouchers for the purchase and settlement of a total of 39.25 tons of grain, defrauding the state grain purchase funds of more than 100,000 yuan. After the successful success, Chen Weiguo conspired with Yang Rongli, a legal person of the Warehouse Owner Mingguang Osmanthus Flour Company, and the purchasing custodian to falsely issue grain settlement vouchers at 3% of the total amount of grain purchased. Chen Weiguo falsely opened 10 grain purchase settlement vouchers totaling 303.184 tons, and defrauded the state of grain purchase funds totaling more than 836,000 yuan.
Mingguang Osmanthus Storage Depot is a rental depot. On September 20, 2015, chuzhou directly under the Central Grain Storage Co., Ltd. signed the "Storage Facility Lease Contract" with Mingguang Osmanthus Flour Co., Ltd., renting the company's two warehouses, No. 4 and No. 6, and other related supporting storage facilities for the purchase and storage of national policy grain.
A criminal verdict in the Huaining County Court in Anhui Province disclosed that the money for the lease was from the Chuzhou directly subordinate treasury, but entrusted the Anqing directly subordinate treasury to send personnel to the treasury to carry out policy-oriented grain purchases. Chen Weiguo and 5 other people, as the purchase personnel stationed in the warehouse, are responsible for the quantity, quality and on-site management of the grain purchased. According to the division of labor, the quality of grain is checked by quality inspectors, the quantity is checked by inspectors, and the warehouse keeper re-inspects the grain. Chen Weiguo is a prosecutor. But in fact, the management of the grain depot was chaotic, and the grain purchase was organized by Yang Rongli (the owner of the Osmanthus Flour Company in Mingguang City) and his relatives. The actual purchase amount approved by Chen Weiguo and others was determined according to the purchase settlement voucher provided by Yang Rongli's relatives, and the grain payment was paid by the Chuzhou directly subordinate treasury.
In recent years, with the increase in the pressure of grain collection and storage in China, the storage capacity of grain in Canada has been insufficient, and the number of local entrusted warehouses has also increased. The policy-oriented grains managed by the China Grain Storage Institute are scattered in more than 13,000 grain storage points, and 90% belong to local enterprises. For entrusted storage points and leased warehouses, there are regulatory difficulties due to the lack of direct affiliation.
China Grain Reserve refers to China Reserve Grain Management Group Co., Ltd., the main business includes the central grain reserve grain collection and storage management, temporary policy grain collection and storage management, etc., in the face of a huge scale of collection and storage, had to take the way of leasing warehouses to solve. In the management of leased depots, The Grain Reserve does not care about people or money. In recent years, grain-related risk incidents have also been mainly concentrated in the field of local grain collection and storage. In this regard, the website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the State Supervision Commission once wrote an article pointing out that the Central Grain Storage System has overemphasized objective reasons such as emphasizing "small horse-drawn carts", and to a certain extent has produced the idea of relying on equal dependence, and has not paid enough attention to strengthening its own supervision responsibilities and taking the initiative to resolve risks and contradictions.
Hu Chunyan believes that for a long time, China's grain reserve management has been implemented with a state-led management system with the vertical management of "medium grain reserves" as the core, supplemented by a "central-local" hierarchical management system. Although the supervision system under this dual leadership system can strengthen the management and regulation capabilities of the central government to a certain extent, and is conducive to the local implementation of the central government's policy objectives and the implementation of the regulation and control tasks, in actual implementation, it has evolved into the weakness of vertical supervision and the lack of horizontal supervision, resulting in "vertical management" becoming self-theft.
Officials have little power and great power
Judging from the many cases of corruption in the food system recently reported by various localities, the officials involved are mostly grass-roots "grain officials." These grain depot "silverfish" are not sophisticated in their corrupt means, but they can be frequently successful. According to expert analysis, the main reason is the internal management of some grain stations, especially in the process of grain procurement, storage, sales and other aspects of the autonomy. For example, the grain purchased by the grain station is generally divided into three grades, corresponding to the decreasing purchase price, and some staff members use the method of falsely reporting the quality and grading of grain for private gain. Gao Shilin, the former director of the Chen Ji Grain Station in Yizheng City, once took the method of settling with farmers with third-class grain and settling with the head office with second-class grain, and arbitraged the difference of more than 100,000 yuan.
After the occurrence of corruption in the form of collapse of the grass-roots grain system, Zhou Jianhua, director of the Fifth Examination and Investigation Office of the Yizheng Municipal Discipline Inspection Commission, believes that the top priority in controlling the chaos in the grain system is to standardize the operation and management activities of the grass-roots grain stations, focusing on urging the Municipal Grain Bureau and other departments to strengthen the prevention and control of integrity risks and improve the system and norms.
According to a number of experts interviewed, corruption in the grass-roots food system occurs from time to time, which is related to the relative independence and lack of transparency of the food system and the blind spot of supervision. Dang Guoying, a researcher at the Institute of Rural Development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told China News Weekly that the relative closure of the food system means that the cost of supervision is high. Some scholars suggest that an independent third-party mechanism be introduced in the quality inspection link of the grain circulation field, which is regarded as an attempt to solve the problem of food system supervision. Hu Chunyan believes that by relying on independent external professional forces to evaluate and supervise the quality of grain, to a certain extent, it can prevent fraud and reduce the occurrence of self-theft.
Professor Wei Changdong, director of the Integrity and Rule of Law Center of the Institute of Law of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said that at present, the design of the relevant regulatory system is unrealistic, and there is no real setting up effective supervision for dangerous positions. In Qingshen County, where the case of corruption in grain depots at the grass-roots level occurred, Luo Shuyi, deputy secretary of the county discipline inspection commission and deputy director of the county supervision commission, once said that the county grain department in charge should have assumed the responsibility for supervision and management of the stock, quality, and safety of the reserve grain, but the relevant personnel turned a blind eye, and the supervision was useless. A warehouse manager of the Qingshen County State Grain Company also corroborated this view from the side, "The grain bureau came down to inspect, basically it is to walk around and look at the materials, and I have never found a problem for so many years."
Ren Weimin, who has been working in the Henan Provincial Grain Bureau for a long time, wrote an article pointing out that at the city and county level, the separation of state-owned grain enterprises from government and enterprises is still far from being put in place, and about 1/4 of the county-level grain administrative departments are still the responsibilities of enterprises, and many county-level grain administrative departments have not yet been included in the government sequence, some are public institutions, and some are not even public institutions. Because of the confusion of roles and identities, behavior cannot be made sense.
Another regulatory problem is that these grassroots "grain officials" are small but powerful. Hu Chunyan pointed out that the main reason for the "collapse of corruption" in the grass-roots food system is that the current food security management system is not smooth, the authority of the grass-roots "number one" is too large, the cost of violating the law is too low, and the supervision and accountability are not effective.
In 2016, the discipline inspection and supervision organs of Haikou City, Hainan Province, investigated and handled a series of corruption cases in Haikou's food system. Among the 27 people who were filed and examined, the people involved in the case went up to Chen Xin, former secretary of the party group and director of the Haikou Municipal Grain Bureau, and down to the custodian of the enterprise warehouse. Among them, the four people suspected of violating the law by the municipal unit embezzled and accepted bribes amounting to more than 8 million yuan and embezzled 1.86 million yuan of public funds; the units involved in the case fraudulently rotated reserve grain to defraud the state financial subsidies of 4.8675 million yuan.
As a municipal grain enterprise, it is mainly responsible for grain reserves and rotation, and has not been concerned for a long time. The case-handling personnel found that these "petty officials" held small official positions but held real power, managed the reserve and rotation of tens of thousands of tons of grain reserves, and took advantage of their positions to wantonly solicit and accept benefit fees and kickbacks from grain merchants and construction contractors of private enterprises. However, grain reserves are funded from reserve plans, distributions, loans, grain purchases, reserves, rotations, and distribution of rotation subsidies, which involve development and reform, finance, and agricultural development to the outside world, and grain depots in charge of grain and grain depots in various countries. Although there are many supervisory entities, the responsible persons of relevant units either "hold the group" for the sake of interests or neglect management, resulting in ineffective supervision.
Wei Changdong believes that the grass-roots food system should build an effective internal and external supervision system, first of all, to standardize the operation of internal power; secondly, in the process of grain procurement, storage management, and transportation, specific system construction for high-risk links. In addition, targeted external third-party supervision should be done according to the specific type of power corruption.