How did it happen? Case disclosure: 41 passbooks were used to embezzle a subsidy of 360000 yuan in Wangmao Town | Grain sales | Case details
Previously, the Discipline Inspection Commission and Supervision Commission of Bobai County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region received clues of issues transferred by the county party inspection team, reflecting the suspicion of embezzlement of the grain sales subsidy funds in Wangmao Town. The Discipline Inspection Commission and Supervision Commission of Bobai County have established a special investigation team to verify the situation.
The members of the investigation team retrieved the distribution materials of the 2020 grain subsidy in Wangmao Town, including the grain sales plan, grain purchase settlement, grain subsidy details, and grain direct subsidy fund distribution table. After comparing and verifying each material, we found that all the accounting materials were relatively complete.
The legitimate investigation has come to a standstill, and a document distributing a grain subsidy of 364824 yuan has caught our attention. This 2020 grain sales subsidy was distributed to 41 households respectively, but there are multiple signatures with the same handwriting in the signature column of the households in the settlement statement and fund distribution table.
With doubts in mind, we retrieved the original vouchers of 41 households receiving grain subsidies from the bank and found that they all withdrew cash in one go within a few days after the grain subsidies were received. Among them, 37 withdrawal vouchers had identical customer signatures and handwriting.
We randomly contacted Zhang, a farmer on the visiting list, and asked, "Hello, may I ask how many paddy fields do you have at home, whether you have any crops planted, and whether you have received any grain sales subsidies?"
"My whole family moved to Bobai County six years ago. Our farmland has been abandoned for many years and we have not received any food sales subsidies."
"How does the passbook show that you have received subsidies?"
"I remember what you said about it," Zhang said. "Last year, a relative named Liu, who worked at the grain depot in Wangmao Town, approached me and asked me to lend him my passbook. He also asked for the passbook password."
"The situation of villager Zhang is definitely not an exception." With years of experience in handling cases, the investigation team leader arranged for us to continue visiting the farmers on the list, and found that the situation was roughly the same as what Zhang reported.
Next, we brought in the staff of Wangmao Town Grain Bureau and the then head of the Grain Bureau, Qin Ming, for a conversation and verification.
"I purchased a batch of rice from another city at a low price and used my identity as a local purchaser to weigh, inspect, store, and settle the purchase price, earning the price difference." Knowing that the situation had been exposed, Qin Ming truthfully explained the problem: "I thought the accounting procedures were done seamlessly, and the method was so covert that it wouldn't be discovered..."
In order to fabricate the purchase of rice by local farmers, Qin Ming asked the employees of the Wangmao Town Grain Institute to collect and borrow the identity information and passbooks of 41 local farmers, and handed them over to the unit cashier Liu to create false materials such as grain sales plans, grain purchase settlement forms, and grain direct subsidy fund distribution forms, and then arranged for Liu to receive subsidies as a farmer and hand them over to him. In this way, Qin Ming used 41 passbooks to withdraw over 360000 yuan in grain sales subsidies.
In the end, Qin Ming was expelled from the party and sentenced to three years and five months in prison for committing corruption, fined 200000 yuan, and recovered illegal gains.
In response to the deep-seated problems exposed in the case, such as the lack of grassroots grain depot systems, lax management, and lack of supervision, the Bobai County Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision urges the grain purchase and sales authorities and state-owned grain enterprises to gradually tighten the responsibility chain, focus on identifying prominent problems in the operation and supervision mechanism, and develop and improve county-level grain reserve management accountability systems, internal control systems of state-owned grain enterprises, and other institutional measures to further plug institutional loopholes and prevent such problems from happening again.
