Original title: Taking the case as a lesson | Layers of failure caused legal aid fraud
Source: Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and State Supervision Commission website
“Eldest sister, the divorce matter you reported is within the scope of legal aid, and the poverty certificate you provided also meets the requirements. We have gone through the review and approval process, and we will designate a legal service office to provide you with services…” August 23, At the window of the Legal Aid Center of the Judicial Bureau of Dayu County, Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province, staff member Peng Chun’s words made the people applying for legal aid a breath of fresh air.
This scene also made Luo Haifang feel gratified. Luo Haifang is a cadre assigned to the First Discipline Inspection and Supervision Group by the Commission for Discipline Inspection of Dayu County. Not long ago, she and her colleagues investigated and dealt with a supplementary case of legal aid fraud due to the form of review. The purpose of this inspection is to observe the after-effects and promote rectification.
In March of this year, the Disciplinary Inspection and Supervision Team dispatched to the First Disciplinary Inspection and Supervision Team accepted a clue to a problem transferred by the inspection: The legal aid center of the County Justice Bureau has many suspicious points in the case file and suspects of fraud and fraud. Contact the people in need who had received legal aid in the case file, but found that many people said that they had not done legal aid.
The truth of the matter was quickly ascertained. During the period from 2015 to 2019, the county’s legal aid center’s 18 case files contained 5 frauds, 3 cases were split from 1 case file, and many legal workers received work subsidies in violation of regulations, totaling 7,800 yuan.
Are the legal aid cases for the people in difficulty actually fraudulent? The case-handling personnel retrieved the problem file and talked to relevant personnel and found that legal workers had repeatedly succeeded in fraud and compensation, which was related to the failure of review and approval. “Fake and split cases are basically reviewed by the deputy director of the center, Chen Shan.” Luo Haifang said, “The question of the form of review is more serious.”
The investigators discovered that there were a large number of logical errors in the forgery of the case files, and even the official seal of the People’s Government of Town A was stamped on the poverty income certificate of the needy people in Town B. Chen Shan also admitted that in the process of reviewing documents, she only paid attention to whether the matters accepted belong to the scope of legal aid, whether there is a proof of poverty income, whether the legal aid documents are complete, and did not pay much attention to the content of the documents.
“Fake loopholes are full, but Chen Shan turned a blind eye. As long as these low-level problems are verified, the tricks of fraud and repairs can be quickly exposed. After all, she is not responsible and has a false style.” The investigator said.
How did the examination and approval pass fall behind?
Since Wang Moumou, director of the legal aid center of the bureau retired in 2018, the bureau has no longer appoint cadres to be responsible for the examination and approval work, and the examination and approval column of the form is often blank. Lan Heyang, the former deputy director of the County Bureau of Justice at the time, had little problem with the legal aid work he was in charge of.
In August of this year, Chen Shan was warned and punished by the party because of her untruthful work style and the mere formality of the review; Lan Heyang was exhorted to talk and deal with her due to negligence in management and ineffective supervision.
Luo Haifang said that in conversations with relevant staff of the county’s judicial bureau, it was learned that people generally did not believe that there would be legal workers who would falsify and split a legal aid case for a subsidy of only a few hundred yuan. Many people think that legal aid work is highly professional, and legal documents have standardized requirements, and nothing goes wrong.
This also led to the center’s failure to comply with the regulations that should be complied with. According to regulations, people in need must go to the legal aid center to apply in person, and the center will assign legal workers to provide assistance services based on the wishes of the people in need, and the separation of review and approval will be implemented. However, in order to save trouble, the center has handed over the legal aid application form with the official seal to the legal workers to fill out by themselves, so that people with wrong intentions have an opportunity to take advantage of it.
After identifying the crux of the problem, the Commission for Discipline Inspection of Dayu County issued a supervisory recommendation requesting the judicial bureau of the county to conduct self-examination and self-correction throughout the county, and promote the bureau’s handling of legal aid cases since 2015, especially for grass-roots legal service agencies. Special inspections were carried out on legal aid traffic accident cases undertaken by its legal professionals, and comprehensive physical examinations were conducted on 1,305 case files.
After a comprehensive inspection, the county has also found 7 cases of fraud, 1 case of receiving agency fees for people in need of assistance, and 3 cases of receiving property from people in need of assistance. The County Justice Bureau not only recovered the legal aid subsidies issued in violation of regulations, but also ordered the legal workers involved in the case to return the agency fees and property collected in violation of the regulations to the people in difficulties, and issued warnings and punishments to relevant legal workers.
In order to promote reform through cases, the County Commission for Discipline Inspection asked relevant responsible persons to participate in the analysis of the cause of the case, find the crux of the case, and prescribe it from the deep level of risk points of clean government, institutional mechanisms, and so on. The County Justice Bureau carried out special rectification of outstanding issues in style construction, strictly reviewed and approved the process, built a feedback linkage mechanism for relevant functional departments, and played a set of combination punches from the level of style construction and system prevention. Now, legal aid work has returned to the normal track.
During the inspection at the end of August, Luo Haifang found that none of the 18 documents in the latest case file were missing. The reviewers and approvers on the approval form signed their opinions, and the legal documents were complete. Luo Haifang randomly selected a few of the people in need of assistance left in the case files and called them, and they all expressed satisfaction. (Correspondent Qiu Mingye Gan Jiping|| Chief Editor Zhou Zhenhua)
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