It takes half an hour to concoct one, how can a false EIA report be approved?
Half Moon talks about reporter Lai Xing Cheng Di
An EIA report can be compiled in half an hour by plagiarism, and the EIA engineer goes to the site to investigate and pose, and some have never been out of the scene, and many report compilers sign on behalf of them...... Since 2023, many provinces and cities in China have exposed typical cases of EIA fraud, which have exposed many loopholes such as lax management of EIA qualifications, lax control of evaluation experts, and lagging early warning mechanisms on the platform.
Counterfeiting industry chain
"EIA fraud has been around for a long time, but this case involves more than 100 counties and municipalities in more than 20 provinces across the country, which is really rare. Shen Shuangwu, president of the Environmental Resources Trial Division of the Intermediate People's Court of Jiujiang City, Jiangxi Province, told Banyuetan reporters.
Two months ago, the Jiujiang court sentenced several defendants in an EIA fraud case, the first criminal case in Jiangxi to be prosecuted for EIA fraud. In less than a year, the criminals involved in the case issued false EIA reports for 753 companies across the country with only one EIA technician. The reason why criminals can expand their business to many places across the country lies in their unique environmental impact assessment fraud industry chain.
In December 2019, Yu, her husband Xiao Moufeng, sister Xiao Moulin and others who worked in an environmental protection company in Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province established Jiangxi Zhanhang Environmental Protection Technology Co., Ltd. Soon, they found Chang's cooperation with Chang, who was working in Shandong, through the "headhunting" company. Although Chang's employer is not an environmental protection company, she passed the exam to obtain the qualification of an environmental impact assessor. The company agreed with it that in addition to giving it an annual anchorage fee of 25,000 yuan, it would also pay an additional fee for each EIA report (form) issued.
"In the EIA market, EIA practitioners are in high demand, and there are only more than 300 people in Jiangxi. Kong Xiangfeng, captain of the second brigade of the mobile detachment of the Jiujiang Public Security Bureau, believes that the professional qualification examination for environmental assessors is more difficult than the judicial examination. According to the statistics of the case-handling agency, no one in Jiangxi Province passed the national environmental impact assessment examination in 2020.
As an industry insider, Yu's EIA qualification peddling information (including 700~1,500 yuan for the environmental impact report form and 8,000~15,000 yuan for the report) has attracted many intermediaries who are not qualified to prepare EIA reports to cooperate with him. After these intermediaries undertake the EIA business of the construction project, the exhibition company will issue the corresponding qualification materials. The intermediary combines the main content of the EIA report and the qualification materials it "prepares" into a booklet and sends it to the local environmental protection department for approval.
Banyuetan reporters learned that these EIA reports did not involve the EIA engineers in the preparation, review, and signature, and were "prepared" by middlemen and people. Some fraudsters don't understand EIAs, but they can make an EIA report in half an hour by plagiarizing.
According to the judgment documents provided by the court, the more than 700 fraudulent EIA documents have basically passed the approval of the local ecological environment department. "Some environmental protection department review experts are 'paper review', not clear about the project site situation, and pay more attention to the 'good or not' preparation of the EIA report. An industry insider said.
Legal pollution Fu Xiaoning made
Regulatory loopholes
There are many similarities between the Zhanhang EIA fraud case and the "Shandong Jinhua EIA fraud case" reported by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment in 2023. The persons who were criminally punished in accordance with the law in the case included the actual controller of the EIA unit, the affiliated EIA engineer, and the intermediary brokers who liaisoned with the intermediary, covering the main chain of EIA fraud, and exposing many problems in the management of EIA qualifications, the preparation and approval of EIA reports, etc.
The police investigation found that while Yu and others were operating the exhibition company, they also registered five environmental assessment companies in Anhui, Hubei and other places, one to expand their business, and the other to avoid punishment. "The environmental protection department will punish the EIA units for violating the rules, and in order to avoid deducting points more than a certain amount and making it difficult to take over the business, they will change to different 'vests' to undertake the business. Kong Xiangfeng said.
In the EIA industry, it is common to register multiple companies to operate, and many EIA companies have several or even more than a dozen affiliated enterprises under the names of their legal representatives and shareholders, some of which are listed in the "blacklist" of prohibited EIA work, but their affiliated enterprises are still conducting business.
According to the relevant regulations, the presiding officer of the EIA report shall organize and participate in the preparation of the environmental impact report (form) throughout the process. However, when Chang was named as an exhibition company, he agreed to go to the site up to 5 times a year. Although Chang had used her leave time to go to the site, she only took pictures and posed for poses, and she never conducted surveys, current situation monitoring, data collection, and did not prepare an environmental impact assessment report (form).
In order to save trouble, Chang handed over his account on the EIA credit platform to Xiao Moulin for use, who could log in to the platform at any time to export the "Preparation Unit and Preparation Personnel Table" required for the EIA project, and Chang's signature in the form was also signed by Xiao Moulin and others. Cui Fang, the judge handling the case of the Lianxi District Court of Jiujiang City, said.
Control it at the source
"At present, others only need the mobile phone number and verification code of the EIA engineer to log in to the EIA credit management platform and export important documents such as the "Preparation Unit and Preparation Personnel Table". Kong Xiangfeng suggested that the management of EIA accounts should be strengthened, such as setting up face recognition functions to prevent the abuse of EIA qualifications.
Generally speaking, it takes a week for an EIA specialist to prepare an EIA report form, and the EIA report cycle is longer, while Chang prepares an average of two copies a day, which is obviously unreasonable. But in this case, it was not until he had "prepared" more than 700 EIA reports that he was discovered during a manual inspection by the environmental protection department. Cui Fang suggested that the environmental department should strengthen the intelligent construction of the EIA credit platform, timely monitor the abnormal growth of the performance of the EIA agency, a large number of orders across provinces, etc., so as to facilitate the detection of EIA fraud and other behaviors through big data comparison.
Banyuetan reporters learned that starting in 2021, the Jiangxi Provincial Department of Ecology and Environment will implement an on-site questioning system for EIA assessors in the province, requiring the main preparers of EIA documents to accept detailed inquiries after submitting the EIA report. "Some EIArs were confused and couldn't even tell the general situation of the project. Huang Huang, head of the environmental assessment section of the Jiujiang Ecological Environment Bureau, said that many EIArs who only take "qualification fees" show their feet in the process of questioning, and the system helps to promote the reduction of EIA certification and fraud in the early stage of EIA preparation.
In addition, some law enforcement officials believe that the EIA document is the source document of ecological environmental protection, if the source is wrong, no matter how good the follow-up environmental protection of the project is, it may be difficult to convince the public, but due to the lack of legal provisions, grassroots environmental protection personnel do not know how to deal with these "EIA black households" projects that have been approved to start construction through fraud.
Grassroots cadres suggested that local environmental protection departments should "look back" at the "environmental impact assessment" projects, especially focusing on water conservancy projects and other projects that are easy to affect the ecological environment, as well as projects with bad fraud and fraud, and promptly discover and eliminate possible environmental risks and hidden dangers.