Have a "number" in mind and a score in supervision.

Changzhou Bell Tower, Jiangsu Province: Inter-departmental Big Data Collaboration to Prevent and Resolve Financial Risks

The procurator of Zhonglou District Procuratorate analyzed a clue of an illegal fund-raising case with the help of supervision model.

The procurator of the Zhonglou District Procuratorate launched a publicity campaign to prevent illegal fund-raising.

"Love Late Department" 10 billion pension scam, "Juru Department" P2P financial trap, "Shentong Department" private fund scam.……In recent years, stakeholder-related economic crimes, represented by illegal fund-raising cases, continue to occur frequently, the amount involved continues to rise, the criminal means are being refurbished day by day, and the crackdown situation is becoming more and more severe. How to base on the functional orientation, improve the ability to perform their duties, and provide a strong judicial guarantee for preventing and resolving financial risks has become a difficult problem to be solved in front of the national procuratorial organs.

The Procuratorate of Zhonglou District, Changzhou City, Jiangsu Province has made overall use of big data thinking and technology to independently develop the legal supervision model of stakeholder-type economic crimes, which has achieved a revolutionary leap from manual review and case handling to digital review and case judgment, and contributed procuratorial wisdom to guarding the people’s "money bags".

Overcome difficulties and run out of the "acceleration" of improving quality and efficiency.

"I thought I had to wait for several months, but I didn’t expect to sue so soon, which made everyone see hope at once!" In the petition reception room of the hospital, 72-year-old Uncle Yang, together with four other representatives of fund-raising participants, was invited to attend the case briefing organized by the hospital. When he learned that the case had made new progress soon, Uncle Yang had mixed feelings and was relieved.

Uncle Yang is one of the many elderly people who have been involved in the "love night system" tens of billions of pension scams. From 2014 to 2018, Changzhou Manfujiu Health Information Consulting Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Manfujiu Company"), a Changzhou affiliate of "Love Night Department", promised to pay a high return in the name of providing home-based care services, and publicly absorbed more than 160 million yuan from the public, especially the elderly, resulting in more than 500 fund-raising participants hitting Shui Piao with a total of more than 35 million yuan.

"In the past, illegal fund-raising cases were often difficult to identify because of the large number of people involved, long time span and complicated capital exchanges, and the handling period was generally long." Zhu Ye, director of the Fourth Procuratorial Department of the hospital, said that it is precisely because the amount of such cases is highly professional. In judicial practice, investigation agencies generally entrust accounting firms with relevant qualifications to conduct special audits.

However, even a professional audit institution, this work is equally laborious and protracted. Zhu Ye once made a statistic: it takes at least three months to audit an illegal fund-raising case of the scale of Manfujiu Company, and it takes one year to be complicated. Often in the stage of examination and prosecution, the audit report has not yet been released, so that the procuratorial organs have to return the supplementary investigation and extend the time limit for examination and prosecution. Can we use big data to realize the rapid processing of massive accounts, and then drive procuratorial cases to improve quality and efficiency?

After two years of exploration and practice, in April 2020, the legal supervision model of stakeholder-type economic crimes developed by the institute came into being. The model adheres to the concept of inter-departmental big data collaborative case handling, opens up the "data island" between public prosecutors and public prosecutors, and opens the port to public security organs. It collects the electronic running bills and company electronic books generated between illegal fund-raising companies and fund-raising participants obtained in the investigation into a data pool. Relying on artificial intelligence and cloud computing technology, it converts the transaction details of different financial institutions into a unified format, automatically analyzes the creditor’s rights and debts through data cleaning and collision, and finally generates a preliminary statistical report and a tree structure diagram of fund-raising with one click.

"On average, 200 accounts can be cleaned every 5 minutes. The same workload requires three days for manual audit." Zhu Yexin happily introduced, "With the assistance of the model, the procuratorial organ can complete the examination and prosecution within one month, so as not to extend or withdraw the investigation, thus reducing the complaints of the masses."

Taking the initiative to embrace big data has not only enabled dreams may come to reduce burdens and increase efficiency, but also deepened legal supervision and stimulated new kinetic energy.

"The model brings together two data pools. The preliminary statistical report generated by the calculation of the company’s electronic running bill and electronic account book is data pool A, and the report information entered in the investigation link is data pool B. Through comparative collision and intelligent screening, data pools A and B can dig out the clues hidden behind abnormal data, thus achieving accurate supervision." In Zhu Ye’s view, the handling of the case of Manfujiu Company illegally absorbing public deposits vividly explains the new path of digital empowerment procuratorial supervision and cracking down on the rectification of pension fraud.

In this case, the model found a key anomaly in the correlation comparison-the unpaid amount of eight fund-raising participants, including Uncle Yang, was calculated by the model, which was seriously inconsistent with the loss amount reported by them, and it was quickly locked that all the eight fund gaps came from the salesman Huamou. According to this, the procuratorate found out that Huamou occupied and defrauded the company’s property by tampering with the contract amount and signing a false contract, totaling 317,000 yuan, so he promptly launched case supervision. Later, Huamou was convicted of embezzlement and fraud.

Iterative escalation, cutting off the money chain of money laundering crime

At present, stakeholder-type economic crimes go hand in hand with downstream money laundering crimes. After gathering funds, criminals often continue to take risks and launder "black money" by transferring money, "running points", bulk transactions and even cross-border transfers, which makes it difficult to recover the money from upstream crimes and the losses of victims irreparable.

In January 2022, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the People’s Bank of China, the Ministry of Public Security and other 11 departments jointly issued the "Three-year Action Plan for Combating and Governing Money Laundering Crimes (2022-2024)", which made systematic arrangements for increasing the punishment of money laundering crimes.

On hearing the order, the hospital promoted the implementation of anti-money laundering work as the "number one" project, adhered to the simultaneous review of upstream and downstream crimes in handling illegal fund-raising cases, and dug deep into the clues of money laundering crimes around the flow of money involved. In that year, three people were prosecuted for money laundering crimes. Behind this, the new iterative and upgraded version 2.0 of the legal supervision model of stakeholder-type economic crimes is indispensable.

"After careful planning, money laundering crimes are often complicated in capital transactions, which require a lot of manpower and time to identify and screen. The original model cannot provide corresponding technical support and needs to be updated." Jun Chen, deputy attorney general of the hospital, said that in version 2.0, the model added anti-money laundering crime supervision rules, accurately tracked the capital chain in massive bill data, and thoroughly examined the whereabouts of funds, which became the "strongest assistance" for case handlers.

To realize the supervision of similar cases, we must first explore the common characteristics. "We have sorted out and analyzed the money laundering crimes handled in the city in the past three years, summed up the rules in terms of the flow, amount, time and frequency of capital transactions, set up a number of supervision rules, and flexibly combined them in different cases." Jun Chen explained.

As a result, the Institute also cooperated with Changzhou Central Sub-branch of the People’s Bank of China and signed the Memorandum of Cooperation on Combating and Governing Money Laundering Crimes. The People’s Bank of China opened a "green channel" for the procuratorial organs to obtain the transaction details of the accounts involved, provided financial data support, and formed a joint force to combat money laundering crimes.

To Jun Chen’s delight, the upgraded model has achieved good results in the case of illegally absorbing public deposits for the first time.

From November 2018 to January 2020, Xu launched wealth management products such as Puka and Gold Card in the name of a technology company, and absorbed more than 14 million yuan from 55 fund-raising participants. Up to the time of the incident, he has paid more than 9.7 million yuan, resulting in direct losses of more than 4.3 million yuan for fund-raising participants.

Where does the huge funding gap flow? Is there a hidden money laundering transaction? After the case was judged, the procuratorial case handlers took "the number of transfers from the company’s fund collection account to a non-fund-raising participant’s account ≥5" and "a single transfer ≥ 50,000 yuan" as the model screening rules, and cleaned and identified thousands of complicated related transaction data. Ten minutes later, Yang, an outsider, surfaced.

The model screening results show that from September to November, 2019, there were as many as 23 transfers between the company’s fund collection account and Yang’s personal account, of which a single transfer of more than 50,000 yuan reached 3 times, which was obviously abnormal.

After receiving the clues pushed by the model, the hospital coordinated the relevant commercial banks to retrieve the flow of Yang’s personal bank account through the People’s Bank of China, and imported it into the model again, showing that 16 of the above 23 funds have been withdrawn, and the remaining 7 funds have been transferred, and finally flowed to the personal account named Shen but actually controlled by Xu, the person in charge of the company.

On this basis, the procuratorate judged that Yang was suspected of money laundering, and immediately transferred the clue to the public security organ and the People’s Bank of China for joint investigation. After guiding the investigation, it was finally found out that Yang knew that Xu was engaged in illegal absorption of public deposits, and he still helped to transfer more than 490,000 yuan of stolen money through cash withdrawal or transfer. On December 17, 2022, the court prosecuted Yang for money laundering.

In view of the weak regulatory links exposed in the case, the court also issued a letter of legal risk warning to the relevant banks involved, suggesting to further improve the regulatory mechanism for account anomalies and cut off the capital chain of money laundering crimes in time.

"With the model as a link, we have carried out multi-level and in-depth cooperation with the People’s Bank of China in data sharing, clue research, subject research, and rule of law propaganda, and jointly woven a’ Skynet’ to punish money laundering crimes." Jun Chen introduced that in March this year, the two sides also jointly launched the legal-popularization sitcom "The Correct Opening Method of Anti-money Laundering", which was circulated in the business outlets of 23 banks in the city, so that the awareness of anti-money laundering was deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.

Wake up the data and grasp the "wind vane" of risk warning.

The deep-seated significance of digital empowerment lies in promoting the fundamental transformation of procuratorial work from passive to active, from handling to governance.

In handling the case, the hospital found that some people involved in the case who were not dealt with were good at "taking advantage of the loopholes in the law" and wandered in the gray area, adding fuel to the fire for illegal fund-raising, and such groups were just the blind spots of supervision. "This discovery dates back to an illegal fund-raising case handled three years ago. The case relies on group operation, and the organizational structure of the fund-raising company is a four-level’ pyramid’ structure of the person in charge, the sales manager, the team manager and the salesman. " Zhu Xi recalled.

For this kind of multi-level organizational structure, in the process of information transmission from top to bottom, there will generally be layer-by-layer attenuation, and the criminal intent of the people involved will also decrease accordingly. According to the relevant judicial interpretation, for ordinary salesmen at the bottom of the pyramid, the procuratorial organs fully implement the criminal policy of combining leniency with severity, and those who can take the initiative to return stolen goods and compensate, generally will not be investigated for criminal responsibility.

Unexpectedly, when reviewing the list of salesmen attached to the audit report, Zhu Ye inadvertently caught a glimpse of a familiar name-Zou, involving 2.6 million yuan. With vague memory, Zhu Ye began to search the cases of previous years case by case, and finally found the same name in the list of audit report salesmen of an illegal fund-raising case in 2018, involving an amount of 800,000 yuan.

"I have worked in two illegal fund-raising companies. Although they are all bottom-level salesmen, I still return to my old business after the first company was investigated, and the amount is large, and the subjective intention is particularly obvious." Zhu Ye believes that Zou no longer has the condition of "leniency", so he prosecuted according to law.

After arriving at the case, Zou admitted that he wanted to use the criminal policy of combining leniency with severity as an "umbrella" to evade legal investigation, but unexpectedly he "fortunately" met the same prosecutor. Zhu Ye, the "lucky" prosecutor, also admitted that it was with the impression of the remaining unpopular surname of "徾" that he stumbled upon a "fish that escaped from the net".

"But handling cases cannot rely solely on’ impression’ and’ accident’." With the continuous accumulation of business experience, Zhu Ye gradually realized that it is not only the fund-raising actors who attempt to "exploit the legal loophole"-some fund-raising participants know that there are many traps, deliberately make quick money by means of fast-forward and fast-out, and after tasting the sweetness, they become "professional investors"; Some P2P borrowers saw the fund-raising company go bankrupt, but they deliberately defaulted on it when they clearly had the repayment ability, forming a malicious "debt evasion"……

How to "wake up" and "revitalize" the sleeping case data to further enhance the risk early warning and social governance capabilities? The legal supervision model of stakeholder-type economic crimes breaks through the data barrier between cases, and expands and generates three types of group information base-

Relying on the information base of fund-raising actors, the hospital implements list management for the business personnel of the company involved, and gives early warning to those who participate in illegal fund-raising again, and will be prosecuted according to law if the circumstances are serious; Relying on the information database of fund-raising participants, the institute has issued more than 180 reminder letters since 2020 for many participants who have been screened out; Relying on the P2P borrower information database, we will promptly push malicious "debt evasion" clues to local financial supervision departments to provide support for subsequent recovery.

"The convergence of case data can enable procuratorial organs to dig out the social problems hidden behind the cases in a timely and in-depth manner, do a good job of risk warning, and participate in social governance in order to be more targeted." Sun Min, the chief procurator of the hospital, said.

(Our correspondent Qi Hao   Gao Shan   Huang Min)

Feel the surging momentum of digital prosecution

&ensp, deputy to the National People’s Congress, sample garment worker and trade union chairman of Changzhou Laosan Group Co., Ltd.; Li chengxia

In recent years, the crime of illegal fund-raising is still running at a high level, the number of fund-raising participants continues to rise, and new illegal fund-raising methods emerge in an endless stream. The ever-changing "vest" is even more overwhelming and difficult to distinguish between true and false. Among them, the huge elderly population has become the main hunting target of criminals. The overall situation of illegal fund-raising is still grim, and it is extremely urgent to effectively prevent systemic financial risks.

Better late than never, save for a rainy day. In 2019, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate focused on preventing and resolving financial risks, and issued the "No.3 Procuratorial Proposal" to the Central Financial and Economic Committee to promote the improvement of the financial supervision system and mechanism. The national procuratorial organs insist on paying equal attention to both punishment and governance, and promote the implementation of the "No.3 procuratorial proposal": taking judicial handling as the starting point, continuously increase the punishment for illegal fund-raising crimes; Actively guide the investigation organs to dig deep and dig through the whereabouts of the stolen money, and maximize the recovery and loss.……

Pioneering and innovative ideas and effective measures show us the clear attitude and bold responsibility of procuratorial organs to punish illegal fund-raising crimes according to law. Among them, the legal supervision model of stakeholder-type economic crimes developed by Zhonglou District Procuratorate of Changzhou City, Jiangsu Province is particularly eye-catching. The model is oriented to solve the problem of handling cases, takes big data as the core, studies algorithms and rules intensively, and opens up a new world of digital censorship, case supervision and intelligent early warning, so that people can feel fairness and justice in every judicial case, but also feel the surging momentum of digital prosecution.

It is hoped that the procuratorial organs will continue to intensify the crackdown on the crime of illegal fund-raising, run through the whole process of handling cases, further strengthen communication and cooperation with financial supervision departments, prevent and resolve financial risks, eradicate the social soil where illegal fund-raising breeds, and maintain economic and financial order and social harmony and stability. At the same time, it is also hoped that the procuratorial organs can continue to optimize and refine the legal supervision model of stakeholder-type economic crimes based on reality, and continue to develop more effective, practical and easy-to-use supervision models, so as to improve the quality and efficiency of handling cases, help the intelligent supervision and respond to the expectations of the masses with the digital procuratorial reform in hit the floor.