Ministry of Ecology and Environment: Continue to maintain a high-pressure and severe punishment posture for illegal acts of environmental impact assessment
Shandong's "high-yield environmental impact assessor" case pronounced sentencing four people
The announcement of the judgment in the Jinhua EIA fraud case has once again sounded the alarm for the majority of EIA practitioners. The Ministry of Ecology and Environment pointed out that EIA units should operate in accordance with the law and operate in good faith, rely on providing high-quality and high-level EIA documents to win the market, EIA engineers should cherish professional honor, strictly abide by professional ethics, and if someone is only interested in profit and dares to try the law, he will be severely punished by the law.
The case of a "high-yield EIA" in Shandong, who single-handedly set off a storm of verification in the national EIA industry, was recently pronounced at the Jimo District People's Court in Qingdao, Shandong Province.
This case is also the case of environmental impact assessment fraud of Shandong Jinhua Environmental Protection Technology Co., Ltd. The four parties were sentenced to one to three years' imprisonment and fines ranging from 4,<> to <>,<> yuan. At this point, this sensational case that caused a whole country has come to an end, and its impact is far-reaching.
The Ministry of Ecology and Environment has continued to pay close attention to the incident, and after denouncing it as "environmental formalism" at the beginning of the incident and carrying out related clean-up and rectification work, it made the first statement after the verdict: "The Ministry of Ecology and Environment will take the Jinhua EIA fraud case as an opportunity to continue to maintain a high-pressure and severe punishment posture for EIA violations." ”
Win-win for all three parties Only environmental protection loses
In 2021, an EIA engineer in Shandong was responsible for compiling 4 EIA reports and 63,1541 EIA report forms in four months, involving 25 provinces and cities across the country.
This is not "scientific" or "feasible" in practice, and it is at least inconsistent with the experience given by industry insiders - it usually takes months to make an EIA report, and it takes 7 to 10 days to make a report form.
The above-mentioned EIA engineers are so "productive", which has triggered discussions in the industry, and there are several possibilities for analysis: or the project construction unit has prepared it on demand and the EIA engineer signed it; Or the EIA plagiarizes other EIAs, changes the name to compile a data, and the EIA signs it; It is also possible that it is a pseudonym, and he does not participate in the compilation, and other teams operate, and sign a letter when needed...
However, in either case, the EIA assessor must not have gone deep into the project to conduct on-site surveys, carefully prepared reports in accordance with laws and regulations, and kept environmental protection guards. Some commentators have pointed out that "EIAs have become signing machines", and EIA must be a formalistic and formalistic approach. False EIA reports give the green light to project construction and may reduce environmental protection input; EIA companies have low input costs, large business volume and high revenue; EIAs themselves have gained fame and fortune... The three parties win, only environmental protection loses.
"The Ministry of Ecology and Environment firmly opposes EIA formalism." After the incident was exposed, Liu Youbin, spokesperson of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, publicly responded to the incident at a press conference, saying that he had noticed the above situation. After comparing with the data of the national EIA approval system, most of the EIA documents filled in by the unit have not yet been submitted for approval, and the Ministry of Environment has included 100% of the EIA documents in the review of EIA documents according to the proportion of the report. "If it is found that there is a quality problem in the EIA, it will be dealt with seriously in accordance with laws and regulations."
The Department of Ecology and Environment of Shandong Province also immediately urged and guided the relevant municipal and county ecological and environmental departments to launch investigations into the EIA units and EIA engineers involved, and comprehensively reviewed the 505 EIA documents submitted for approval in Shandong, stating that it "resolutely cracks down on fraudulent and shoddy EIA documents".
Subsequently, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment carried out a special clean-up and rectification work, inspecting more than 8000,1 EIA units and more than 4,<> EIA engineers one by one, resolutely cleaning up "shell" EIA companies that do not have technical capabilities, EIA engineers with violations such as "affiliation", as well as units and personnel with problems with the basic information of creditworthiness files.
Judging from the review of EIA documents by the ecological and environmental departments, the EIA industry is mixed. There are "copying" EIA reports, "high-yielding" EIA engineers who do not meet the actual situation, and two EIA reports that are separated by more than half a year. Some projects have residential housing just across the wall, but the EIA report only mentions villages 100 meters away; Some of the symposiums for public participation in projects have not yet been held, and the content of the symposium has appeared in the report... Although the shoddy and fraudulent EIA documents are isolated from the national situation, their nature is bad, which seriously undermines the credibility of the EIA system.
Strong representation Covers the main chain
As the source of this rectification storm, the "working methods" of "high-yield environmental impact assessors" have gradually become clear in the trial of the Jimo District Court in Qingdao.
The Jimo District Court found that in order to seek illegal benefits, the defendant Lin Mouxin instructed the defendant Wang to register and establish Shandong Jinhua Environmental Protection Technology Co., Ltd. and Shandong Yuehua Environmental Protection Technology Co., Ltd., specializing in reselling the qualification page of the EIA report. The defendant Jin Mouyan was introduced by others to attach her professional qualification certificate of EIA engineer to Jinhua Company and collected a "attachment fee" of 3,5 yuan. From September 2020 to February 9, Lin Mouxin and others wantonly solicited business, forged the signatures of EIA engineers when Jin Mouyan, an EIA engineer, did not participate in any preparation and the company did not carry out any EIA work, and sold the qualification page of the EIA report stamped with the seals of Jinhua Company and Yuehua Company through defendant Gu Mouhuan and others, which were used to prepare more than 2021 false environmental impact reports and report forms, with illegal gains of nearly 2,900 yuan and direct economic losses of more than 80 million yuan.
In the end, the Jimo District Court sentenced the defendant Lin Mouxin to three years' imprisonment and fined him RMB 500,000 for the crime of providing false supporting documents; Defendant Wang was sentenced to one year and six months imprisonment and fined RMB 70,000; sentenced defendant Gu Mouhuan to one year and two months in prison and fined RMB 60,000; Defendant Jin Mouyan was sentenced to one year's imprisonment, suspended for one year, and fined RMB 50,000; The unlawful gains of the four defendants were confiscated.
"The above-mentioned personnel deliberately provided a large number of false EIA documents in order to seek illegal profits, and the illegal income was nearly 80,100 yuan, causing direct economic losses of more than <> million yuan, disrupting market order, endangering the ecological environment, and causing bad social impact." Liu Youbin said that the persons who were criminally punished in accordance with the law in the case included the actual controller and legal representative of the shell EIA unit, the EIA engineer who was "affiliated", and the intermediary "broker" who liaised with the intermediary, covering the main chain of EIA fraud.
This case is significant. "This is a major breakthrough in the judicial practice of falsification of EIA after the implementation of the Criminal Law Amendment (11), and it is also a landmark achievement of the linkage mechanism between environmental administrative law enforcement and criminal justice, fully demonstrating the attitude of the ecological environment department and the criminal justice department towards the 'zero tolerance' of EIA fraud and the determination to severely punish it according to law and never tolerate it." Liu Youbin said.
On March 2021, 3, the Criminal Law Amendment (1) came into effect, which stipulates that personnel of intermediary organizations undertaking duties such as asset appraisal, capital verification, verification, accounting, auditing, legal services, sponsorship, safety assessment, environmental impact assessment, environmental monitoring, etc., who intentionally provide false supporting documents, and if the circumstances are serious, they shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than five years or criminal detention, and fined. In other cases, the penalty may also be imprisonment for a term of not less than five years and not more than ten years, and a fine.
Targeted supervision Strictly punish counterfeiting
The announcement of the judgment in the Jinhua EIA fraud case has once again sounded the alarm for the majority of EIA practitioners. Liu Youbin pointed out that EIA units should operate in accordance with the law and operate in good faith, rely on providing high-quality and high-level EIA documents to win the market, EIA engineers should cherish professional honor, strictly abide by professional ethics, and if someone is only interested in profit and dares to try the law, he will be severely punished by the law.
EIA is the legal guarantee that restricts the access of projects and parks, and is the first line of defense to keep green waters and mountains in development, and the quality of EIA documents is the lifeline of EIA work. On the basis of strictly adhering to the bottom line of ecological and environmental protection, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment continues to strengthen the protection of environmental impact assessment, and strives to promote the effective improvement of the quality and reasonable growth of the economy.
In 2022, a total of 12,3 EIAs for construction projects were approved nationwide, with a total investment of about 23.3 trillion yuan. Since the beginning of this year, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment has approved 14 environmental impact assessments such as major infrastructure and resource development, coal supply assurance, and major industrial projects, involving a total investment of more than 600 billion yuan. From January to April, a total of 1,4 EIAs were approved nationwide, involving a total investment of more than 3 trillion yuan.
Liu Youbin said that in recent years, the ecological and environmental departments have taken multiple measures and continued to make efforts to improve the supervision mechanism, implement intelligent duplicate checking, strengthen targeted supervision, carry out special rectification, increase punishment, promote the connection of criminal justice, and severely punish fraudulent and shoddy EIA documents.
Liu Youbin said that the Ministry of Ecology and Environment will strengthen early warning of abnormal situations in EIA practitioners, guide all localities to implement targeted supervision, and transfer serious circumstances and suspected EIA fraud crimes to the public security department for investigation of criminal responsibility according to law. Implement a long-term mechanism for EIA supervision, and comprehensively strengthen the quality supervision of EIA documents. Accelerate the revision of the Measures for the Supervision and Administration of the Preparation of Environmental Impact Reports (Forms) for Construction Projects and supporting documents, improve the management system, and effectively build the first line of defense for source prevention.
At this year's National Eco-environmental Protection Work Conference, Huang Runqiu, Minister of Ecology and Environment, emphasized when deploying key tasks for 2023, that the problem of fraud by third-party environmental protection service providers should be comprehensively rectified. Subsequently, he once again pointed out that it is necessary to adhere to the problem-oriented, dare to take action to tackle the tough, and resolutely investigate and deal with environmental violations in accordance with the law with a "zero tolerance" attitude, especially those that are serious in nature, have a bad impact, and violate the criminal law, and must be resolutely cracked down on and give full play to the warning role.
In addition to falsification of environmental impact assessments, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment is also cracking down on falsification of monitoring data. Jiang Huohua, deputy director of the Department of Ecological and Environmental Monitoring, said at a recent press conference that it will continue to crack down on environmental violations and crimes of automatic monitoring data falsification by key pollutant discharging units, and comprehensively rectify the problem of fraud by third-party environmental protection service organizations. (Rule of Law Daily reporter Zhang Wei)