The audit found out that as of February 7, 20 15, when the defendant Li was the director of the 25th regional management department of the company, Guangzhou * * * No.1, No.2 and No.3 Branch attracted 2 109 victims to buy e-rented wealth management products, and the deposit amount was RMB1690,000 yuan; Shanghai Shen Yu Financial Information Co., Ltd. Dongguan No.1 Branch, Zhangmutou No.1 Branch, Qingyuan No.1 Branch, Jieyang No.1 Branch and Shantou No.1 Branch * * * attracted 3,097 victims to buy e-rental wealth management products, amounting to RMB 65.438+43 billion.
The court held that according to China's financial management laws and regulations, the absorption of funds from the public must be approved by the relevant departments according to law. The business scope stated in the business license of Shanghai Shen Yu Company also clearly stipulates that it is forbidden to engage in financial business requiring approval, such as financial leasing, while the business scope of Guangzhou Branch of Shanghai Shen Yu Company is only to contact the head office. The defendants in this case all had experience in the financial industry before joining the company involved, and they had rich financial common sense and investment experience, and had higher duty of care than ordinary people. We should know that Shanghai Shen Yu Company and its Guangzhou branch, as "non-financial institutions", are not qualified to absorb public deposits. Secondly, the defendant in this case, as the manager of the local branch of Shanghai Shen Yu Company, is responsible for team management and customer investment. What they are engaged in is to absorb the investment funds of customers as the core, and they all get corresponding commissions from the investment funds of customers, which objectively encourages illegal fund-raising activities.
Our court found through trial that, to sum up, nine defendants, including Li, knew that Shanghai Company was not qualified to absorb public deposits, but still participated in it, and their actions constituted the crime of illegally absorbing public deposits.
Is this a unit crime or a natural person crime? In the trial of the case, the public prosecution agency prosecuted nine defendants for crimes committed by natural persons, while the defense lawyer believed that the case should be a unit crime.
The judge in charge of the case said that after the trial, it was believed that the existing evidence confirmed that Shanghai Shen Yu Company was an enterprise with legal personality through industrial and commercial registration, and the public deposits in this case were all absorbed in the name of the "e-rental treasure" platform recommended by Shanghai Shen Yu Company, and all the absorbed money was eventually remitted to the account of Shanghai Shen Yu Company. The public prosecution agency failed to provide evidence to prove that the business model of Shen Yu Company's illegal fund-raising was a personal will rather than a collective decision-making behavior of the company, and the money absorbed was not used for the company's business activities, which should be considered as a unit crime.