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Source: Workers Daily

A financial manager with high education and rich work experience was valued by a small micro enterprise and was hired as the company's financial manager. Unexpectedly, just 10 days after joining the company, he encountered telecommunications fraud and the company lost nearly one million yuan. Who should be held responsible for this loss?

Recently, the Daxing District People's Court of Beijing heard this labor dispute case. The financial manager had only been employed for 10 days and had not received his salary yet, but he had to compensate the company for hundreds of thousands of yuan in losses?

Data map of the company's financial manager being defrauded by telecommunications

Case Introduction

A small technology company wants to recruit an experienced financial manager to standardize the company's financial management and help the company grow and develop healthily.

Soon after the job posting, the company received a resume from Song Ru (pseudonym). With his high education and rich work experience, Song Ru successfully passed the interview and joined the company as a financial manager.

The company did not have a cashier position. After Song Ru joined the company, the company arranged for her to serve as a cashier concurrently.

On the 10th day after Song Ru joined the company, the company's human resources director received an email from a person claiming to be the company's legal representative, "Luo Mou". The email asked him to compile an updated list of the company's personnel, which should include the employees' names, positions and contact information, and should be sent to the aforementioned email address of "Luo Mou".

The HR manager was confused after receiving the above email, because the email address belonged to a certain employee who had resigned. After the employee resigned, the HR manager only used the email address to receive resumes, and the company's legal representative Luo was not aware of this. After a little hesitation, the HR manager still used his own email address to send the latest list of personnel to the email address designated by "Luo". After sending the above email, the HR manager sent a WeChat message to Luo to inform him of the email he had sent to Luo, but Luo did not reply to the WeChat message.

Shortly thereafter, the aforementioned email address used by the HR manager received a second email from "Luo Mou", which asked the HR manager to immediately contact the financial manager Song Ru and have Song Ru added to a certain QQ group for relevant work arrangements. After receiving the aforementioned email, the HR manager immediately contacted Song Ru via WeChat and informed Song Ru of the content of the second email. After receiving the aforementioned notification, Song Ru immediately joined the designated QQ group.

After joining the designated QQ group, Song Ru found that there were only the company's legal representative "Luo" and the person in charge of a certain business "Chen" in the group. The two communicated about the signing of contracts, refund of deposits and other matters in the QQ group.

After Song Ru joined the QQ group, "Luo" immediately @Song Ru in the QQ group: "Are you there? I got your reply." Ms. S: "I'm here." "Luo": "Check how much available funds are in the company's account as of today, take a screenshot and send it to me here." Song Ru sent a screenshot of the company's account balance in the group. After receiving the above screenshot, "Luo" continued to @Song Ru in the QQ group: "Get ready, and arrange a refund of 858,000 yuan to Mr. Luo later." "Chen" also immediately sent the account name of Luo and the bank information in the QQ group, saying "This is the refund information from Mr. Luo."

Song Ru did not verify the relevant situation with Luo or Chen in person, nor did he verify the relevant situation with them through WeChat or phone. Not only that, Song Ru also immediately transferred 858,000 yuan from the company's account to the designated account without following the company's previous approval procedures for external payments through the DingTalk system, and sent a screenshot of the transfer to the QQ group. After completing the above operations, Song Ru was instantly removed from the QQ chat group.

Song Ru was deceived after joining a designated QQ group. The picture shows the QQ interface.

At this point, Song Ru suddenly realized that he might have been the victim of a telecom fraud. Two years after the incident, the case has not been solved, and the 858,000 yuan defrauded from the company has not been recovered.

Under this circumstance, the company and Song Ru had a dispute over the latter's liability for fraud. The company believed that Song Ru, as a professional with more than 10 years of experience in finance, failed to fulfill the due diligence obligations of a financial manager, causing significant losses to the company, and should bear the main responsibility for this. Song Ru believed that he should not bear any responsibility because there were loopholes in the company's financial system, the income from his work belonged to the company, and the corresponding job risks and losses should also be borne by the company.

In desperation, the company applied for labor arbitration to the Labor Dispute Arbitration Committee. After hearing the case, the Labor Dispute Arbitration Committee held that Song Ru was grossly negligent in causing the company to be defrauded of 858,000 yuan, and ruled that Song Ru should pay the company 128,700 yuan in compensation. Both parties were dissatisfied with the above ruling made by the Labor Dispute Arbitration Committee and took the case to court.

The trial process

After trial, the court held that if an employee intentionally or through gross negligence causes economic losses to an employer, the employer has the right to demand corresponding compensation from the employee. In this case, Song Ru had more than 10 years of experience in financial work before joining the company, and served as the company's financial manager after joining the company. Therefore, from the perspective of the professionalism and rigor of financial work, as well as job responsibilities and risk prevention capabilities, Song Ru should be higher than the company's general financial personnel and other employees, and should also have a higher degree of vigilance and duty of care for financial work risks such as telecommunications fraud.

After joining the company, Song Ru failed to formulate a standardized financial system for the company in a timely manner. Moreover, he had never used QQ software to communicate work matters before. In the QQ group involved in the case, he inquired and uploaded the company's account balance information as required by the relevant personnel. He transferred a huge amount of the company's funds without further verifying the situation and going through the usual DingTalk system approval process.

During this process, Song RuFailure to perform the necessary and reasonable duty of care and attention of financial personnel, as well as job responsibilities, and the fault in the performance of their duties has reached the level of gross negligenceTherefore, Song Ru should bear the liability for compensation to the company.

The court rejected the appeal and upheld the original verdict. The picture shows the gavel.

Trial Results

The court considered the subordinate nature of the labor relationship, Song Ru’s fault level and income level, as well as the unreasonable financial position setting and irregular management of the company, and determined that Song RuShould bear a certain proportion of the loss compensation liability,The court also ordered him to pay the company RMB 128,700 in compensation at its discretion.

Song Ru was dissatisfied with the above judgment made by the court and filed an appeal. The second instance court held that the facts found in the original trial were clear and the law applied correctly, so it rejected the appeal and upheld the original judgment.

Judge's opinion

In the course of performing their duties, workers are bound to make mistakes at work, which may even cause economic losses to the employer. However, considering the particularity of the labor relationship and the normal operating risks that the employer should bear, if the worker is not responsible for the corresponding losses,If there is only slight or general negligence, the resulting losses should not be borne by the employee, and the corresponding losses should be regarded as the normal business risk of the employer.If the worker suffers corresponding lossesIf the employee is intentional or grossly negligent, the employer has the right to require the employee to bear compensation liability according to the degree of the employee's fault.As for the specific amount of compensation, the court usually considers the worker’s subjective fault level, income level, and the extent of damage caused by the fault, as well as whether the employer has taken preventive measures (such as system construction, process standardization, job education and training) to prevent or avoid the occurrence of damage incidents, and whether the employer is at fault for the occurrence or expansion of losses afterwards, and other factors, and makes a comprehensive determination.

It should be emphasized thatSound and complete labor rules and regulationsIt helps prevent or reduce the losses caused to the employer by the negligence of the workers in performing their duties. It is recommended that the employer attaches great importance to risk prevention and standardization construction, starting from the internal, constantly improving the rules and regulations, strengthening the awareness of standardization, doing a good job in vocational skills training and professional ethics education, focusing on the construction of corporate culture, enhancing the workers' sense of identity, belonging and responsibility for the employer, and urging the workers to perform their duties in a standardized manner, so as to achieve mutual promotion, mutual benefit, common progress and win-win results for both parties in the labor relationship.

Source: WeChat official account of "Beijing Law Network"