Source: Xiao Sa lawyer

The so-called "job crime" in our country's criminal law system is not a single crime, but refers to the use of existing crimes by staff of state-owned companies, enterprises, institutions, and people's organizations. Official power is a general term for crimes that include corruption, bribery, malpractice for personal gain, abuse of power, dereliction of duty, infringement of citizens' personal rights and democratic rights, destruction of rules and regulations on official activities, and criminal punishments that should be punished in accordance with the criminal law.

In practice, Sajie’s team found that at present, more and more crimes of corruption and bribery are committed by staff, as well as crimes of job embezzlement and bribery by non-staff, etc. Involving crypto-assets - More and more people are using crypto-assets as a hidden tool for benefit transfer.

Today, Sister Sa’s team will take recent cases that have occurred/detected as examples to talk to you about some of the key information revealed by these examples of currency-related job crimes in the encryption era.

01 Take stock of recent major currency-related job crimes

What are the characteristics of cryptocurrency? An old and fundamentalist narrative describes it this way: Cryptocurrency has the characteristics of decentralization, anonymity, non-tamperability, fast transaction speed, low transaction costs, and global peer-to-peer transactions.

Nowadays, the above understanding of cryptocurrency is neither right nor wrong. At least, with the development and advancement of technology, the anonymity of cryptocurrency has become increasingly low, and so-called "anonymity" is becoming a "general means" used by ordinary people to protect the privacy of their transactions. In other words, if the judiciary, technology companies and other technically powerful parties want to investigate, most of the transaction information will be invisible.

(1) Cases of currency-related official crimes involving senior officials of the China Securities Regulatory Commission

Not long ago, the Discipline Inspection and Supervision Team of the China Securities Regulatory Commission and the Guangdong Supervision Commission jointly issued an announcement stating that the former Director of the Science and Technology Supervision Department of the China Securities Regulatory Commission He has committed serious violations of disciplines and laws, abused regulatory powers such as suggestion power, formulation power, and execution power, abandoned technology supervision responsibilities, sought improper benefits for others in the business expansion of information technology system service agencies, software and hardware procurement, etc., and used virtual currency and other rights to carry out activities. money transactions.

Judging from the announcement, the China Securities Regulatory Commission official may be suspected of a variety of crimes, and is more likely to be suspected of bribery.

According to the provisions of Article 385 of my country's "Criminal Law", the crime of accepting bribes refers to a staff member taking advantage of his position to solicit other people's property, or illegally accepting other people's property to seek benefits for others. , is the crime of accepting bribes. In the course of economic transactions, staff who violate regulations and accept kickbacks and handling fees in various names, which are owned by individuals, will be punished as accepting bribes.

Generally, the threshold for filing a bribery crime is 30,000 yuan. In terms of sentencing, if the amount exceeds 30,000 yuan but does not exceed 200,000 yuan, the person shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years or criminal detention, and shall also be fined; if the amount exceeds 200,000 yuan but not more than 3 million yuan, the person shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three years but not more than 10 years, and shall also be fined or confiscation. Property; more than 3 million yuan, shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than ten years or life imprisonment, and shall also be punishedmoney or confiscation of property.

(2) Beijing’s 140 million yuan virtual currency job embezzlement case, 89 million yuan recovered

On December 20 this year, the Beijing Municipal People’s Procuratorate issued a special action to “protect enterprises” Case: An employee of a company took advantage of his position to defraud company property, and used multiple overseas crypto-asset trading platforms and "coin mixers" to transfer the proceeds of crime.

From 2020 to 2021, Feng took advantage of his position in the service provider and regional operations growth department of a technology company to conspire with Tang Moumou, Yang Moumou and others to defraud the company's service provider bonus A total of more than 140 million yuan.

Subsequently, Feng directed Tang Moumou and Yang Moumou to use eight overseas virtual currency trading platforms respectively to convert the money involved in the case from RMB into virtual currency, and confuse the source of funds through overseas "currency mixing" platforms. , nature, transferred through multiple levels in the form of virtual currency, part of the money involved flowed into the account controlled by Feng and others in the form of RMB, and part of the money involved was concealed by Feng and others in the form of virtual currency.

After the incident of this case, Feng returned the stolen 92 Bitcoins BTC (if the price of BTC is calculated as US$100,000 per piece, approximately RMB 66.9 million), and recovered a total of more than RMB 89 million in stolen money, the largest The economic losses of the victim unit were recovered to the maximum extent.

Because Feng is not a staff member of the company, and the victim company is not a company, enterprise or institution, Feng’s use of his authority to defraud the company’s finances is suspected of “job embezzlement.” Article 271 of my country's "Criminal Law" stipulates: Any staff member of a company, enterprise or other unit who takes advantage of his position to illegally appropriate the unit's property for himself, if the amount is relatively large, shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years or criminal detention, and shall also If the amount is huge, he shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three years and not more than ten years, and shall also be fined; if the amount is particularly huge, he shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than ten years and not more than ten years, and shall also be fined.

It should be noted that on April 29 this year, the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security jointly issued the revised "Regulations on the Standards for Filing and Prosecution of Criminal Cases under the Jurisdiction of the Public Security Bureau (2)" for non-staff bribery The standards for filing and prosecution of five non-staff duties-related crimes, including bribery, are the same as those for staff-level duties-related crimes such as bribery. The new regulations clearly stipulate that if personnel of a company, enterprise or other unit take advantage of their position to illegally take possession of the unit's property for themselves, and the amount exceeds 30,000 yuan (the original standard is more than 60,000 yuan), a case shall be filed. Prosecution.

As for the sentencing of the crime of occupational embezzlement, after the Eleventh Amendment to the Criminal Law will be promulgated in 2020, and the sentencing range will be adjusted from two levels to three levels, the judicial interpretation has not been simultaneously improved and followed up. Therefore, in practice, for The sentencing of this crime generally follows the following regulations and judicial practices:

02 Examples of currency-related job crimes, what key information is revealed?

Why do we say that using cryptocurrency to take bribes is nothing or everything? This is also due to the blockchain technology. The data on the chain cannot beTechnical characteristics of tampering and openness and transparency - Crypto assets themselves are very hidden, but once the criminal facts are verified, it is irrefutable.

In the cases related to job-related crimes that Sister Sa’s team has previously handled, identifying the financial links and flows of suspects’ job-related crimes is often the top priority in such cases. A large number of criminal suspects will They use their social relationships to hide and disperse crimes through various covert measures, and establish layers of risk isolation measures.

However, in cases where encrypted assets are used to commit duty-related crimes, the fund flow links are often relatively complete and verifiable, and their authenticity is guaranteed. If there is no correlation (which is often a difficulty in investigating such cases), then the data on the relevant chain will become ironclad evidence of the crime.

Judging from several recent currency-related official crimes, our country’s judiciary has revealed several key information in handling such cases:

1. Investigation technology has improved significantly, and currency mixers No longer a weapon for money laundering/concealing criminal proceeds

From the official embezzlement case disclosed by the Beijing Municipal Procuratorate, it can be found that the criminal suspects even used multiple cryptocurrency trading platforms and even currency mixers to mix funds. The links are confused and the criminal facts are still grasped by the judiciary. Therefore, the Sajie team believes that for the judicial investigation technology in our country (it is reasonable to speculate that other major economically developed regions and jurisdictions also have the same level of technology), the current mainstream currency mixers can only increase the workload of investigation. If you want to check its effect, you can definitely check it.

2. The recovery of stolen goods from currency-related job-related crimes still mainly relies on the initiative and consciousness of criminal suspects

In fact, this can be seen from the recent overseas crypto asset unfreezing cases handled by Sister Sa’s team , Crypto assets do have special characteristics that distinguish them from other assets - recovery of stolen goods and losses largely depends on the cooperation of criminal suspects.

Using USDT as an example, if a criminal suspect converts the proceeds of crime into stable coins such as USDT and hides this part of the assets, even if the flow of the funds can be traced, the funds have been Overseas persons are actually under the control. Our country’s judiciary can only issue a judicial freezing document to the issuing company TEDA, requesting that the funds be frozen. The actual consequence is that overseas criminal suspects cannot use the funds involved, but our country’s judiciary cannot directly recover them. .

If the funds are converted into encrypted assets such as BTC and ETH and are hidden in cold wallets and controlled by overseas personnel, our country's judiciary will not even be able to effectively freeze them, making it even more difficult to recover the stolen goods.

03 is written at the end

With the advent of the bull market for crypto assets led by BTC and the integration and cooperation between the traditional financial system and crypto assets, the scale of the entire industry is constantly expanding. Speaking from one source, Sajie’s team believes that crypto Assets will become an increasingly common method in official crimes in the future.

This aspect requires our country’s Discipline Inspection Commission and the Public Security Bureau to strengthen their awareness and understanding of crypto assets as soon as possible, Targeted upgrade of detection techniques; on the other hand, staff, corporate directors, supervisors and senior executives should also realize that encrypted assets are not a panacea for profit transfer, and do not touch the criminal red line arbitrarily with any luck.