Fraud and severe punishment
Recently, Shanxi Fangchuang Environmental Testing Co., Ltd.(hereinafter referred to as Fangchuang Company) and Xi'an Kona Testing and Calibration Co., Ltd.(hereinafter referred to as Kona Company) were sentenced in accordance with the law in the case of providing false certification documents. Nine defendants were sentenced and banned from engaging in environmental monitoring and related occupations for three years. The two third-party agencies were revoked.
In October 2023, after the media disclosed that these two third-party agencies were suspected of falsifying environmental monitoring data, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, and the Ministry of Public Security decided to jointly supervise relevant cases. After investigation, these two third-party organizations committed crimes against the trend in order to seek illegal interests. In the process of carrying out environmental monitoring business, they resorted to fraud by forging sampling samples, tampering with sampling time, fabricating experimental data, and replacing analytical samples, seriously disrupting market order., endangering the ecological environment and causing adverse social impacts. From March 2021 to the incident, Fangchuang Company issued a total of 172 false monitoring reports with illegal income of 1.106 million yuan; Kona Company issued a total of 222 false monitoring reports with illegal income of 762,000 yuan.
From listing and supervision to filing and investigation to final verdict, the handling process and trial results of the case are undoubtedly a powerful deterrent to the fraud of monitoring data. In the case, it was not only the legal person of the institution that was subject to criminal punishment, but also the specific responsible personnel such as samplers, analysts, and report approval signatories involved in the entire process of fraud, which fully demonstrated my country's zero-tolerance attitude towards curbing fraud of monitoring data., and a firm stance on maintaining ecological and environmental security and ensuring fair competition order in the market.
In recent years, third-party organizations have gradually become an indispensable social force in ecological and environmental protection work. However, a small number of third-party environmental protection service agencies blindly pursue economic interests, cater to "gold owners" in order to undertake business, and do not hesitate to violate professional ethics and laws and regulations, using "crooked brains", turning the discoverer of the problem into an accomplice in illegal sewage discharge.
It can be seen from a large number of public typical cases that currently, the fraud of third-party organizations involves many fields such as the preparation of environmental assessment documents, environmental monitoring, environmental testing, acceptance of environmental protection facilities, identification and certification, and carbon emission data management, which seriously undermines fairness. Market order has greatly damaged the credibility of the government and the environmental rights and interests of the people, and interfered with the scientific decision-making of government departments.
In response to related issues, since the "14th Five-Year Plan", the Ministry of Ecology and Environment has always maintained a high-pressure and crackdown posture of "zero tolerance", and has worked together with the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, and the State Administration for Market Supervision to address the issue of fraud by third-party social environmental protection service agencies. A four-year special rectification was carried out to severely crack down on fraud by third-party environmental protection agencies; In conjunction with the Supreme Law and the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the new judicial interpretations of the two Supreme People's Procuratorate have been revised to clarify the conviction and sentencing standards for crimes committed by third-party environmental protection service agencies providing false certification documents during the process of environmental evaluation, environmental monitoring and carbon emission inspection and testing; the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security have jointly established a joint prevention and joint law enforcement mechanism that connects sentences and promotes them in an integrated manner.
Environmental impact assessment and environmental monitoring of enterprises are basic systems in the field of ecological and environmental protection, and their importance is self-evident. The severe punishment of the institutions involved in the case and those responsible sends a clear signal to the entire industry: any attempt to obtain illegal benefits through fraud will pay a heavy price.
At the same time, the verdict of the case also sounded an alarm for the entire market. Both third-party organizations and practitioners should learn from this and deeply realize that the majesty of the law cannot be provoked and professional ethics cannot be profaned. Honesty and trustworthiness and operating in accordance with the law are not only basic requirements of business ethics, but also necessary prerequisites for avoiding touching legal red lines and maintaining one's long-term development.
