Why the death penalty? How is the property involved in the case handled? The presiding judge of the first instance in the Lai Xiaomin case answered reporters' questions

With the approval of the Supreme People's Court, on the morning of January 29, 2021, the Tianjin No. 2 Intermediate People's Court executed Lai Xiaomin in accordance with legal procedures.

The presiding judge of the first instance of the case answered reporters' questions on relevant issues.

Please explain the reasons for sentencing the defendant to death in this case?

"Retention of the death penalty, strict control and prudent application of the death penalty" is a basic criminal policy of our country. In recent years, through many amendments to the Criminal Law, China has further reduced the number of crimes for which the death penalty applies, but the death penalty has been retained for corruption and bribery crimes, which fully reflects China's attitude of severely punishing corruption and bribery crimes according to law. Articles 383, 385 and 386 of our Criminal Law stipulate that whoever accepts a particularly large bribe and causes particularly heavy losses to the interests of the State and the people shall be sentenced to life imprisonment or the death penalty and confiscation of property. On April 18, 2016, Article 4 of the Interpretation of the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in the Handling of Criminal Cases of Corruption and Bribery further clearly stipulates that if the amount of bribes accepted is particularly huge, the circumstances of the crime are particularly serious, the social impact is particularly bad, and the interests of the state and the people are particularly serious, they may be sentenced to death.

In this case, Lai Xiaomin was sentenced to death for the crime of accepting bribes, mainly based on the following four considerations: First, the amount of bribes accepted by Lai Xiaomin was particularly huge. Lai Xiaomin accepted bribes of more than 1.788 billion yuan, which is the largest amount of bribes accepted since the founding of New China. Second, the circumstances of the crime are particularly serious. Lai Xiaomin has a number of serious circumstances in accordance with the law, such as asking for bribes, the bribery behavior lasts up to 10 years, and there are as many as 22 crimes of accepting bribes, 3 of which are more than 200 million yuan, 400 million yuan and 600 million yuan, and 11 cases of bribery crimes are more than 10 million yuan, involving enterprise financing, project contracting, project development, work transfer, job promotion and other fields. Third, the social impact is particularly bad. The vast majority of Lai Xiaomin's bribery behavior occurred after the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which is typical of not restraining and not giving up, which seriously infringes on the integrity of the state functionaries' job conduct, corrupts the reputation of state functionaries, and causes a particularly bad social impact throughout the country. The fourth is to cause particularly heavy losses to the interests of the state and the people. In order to seek private interests, Lai Xiaomin acted arbitrarily, causing serious harm to the operation and management order of state-owned financial enterprises, causing major economic losses and financial risks, seriously corrupting the social atmosphere, and seriously polluting the political ecology. To sum up, lai Xiaomin's crime of accepting bribes is particularly huge, the circumstances of the crime are particularly serious, the social impact is particularly bad, the interests of the state and the people have suffered particularly heavy losses, the crime is extremely serious, and it should be sentenced to death in accordance with law, deprived of political rights for life, and confiscated all personal property.

At the same time, Lai Xiaomin was also guilty of embezzlement and bigamy, and should be punished for several crimes in accordance with the law, so our court decided to execute him, deprive him of political rights for life, and confiscate all personal property.

SECOND. Lai Xiaomin has a major meritorious performance, so why is he not given a lenient punishment?

Article 68 of China's Criminal Law stipulates that where a criminal has meritorious performance, the punishment may be mitigated or mitigated; if there is a major meritorious performance, the punishment may be mitigated or waived. In this case, after Lai Xiaomin arrived at the case, he reported to the discipline inspection and supervision organs the clues of the case in which senior executives of Huarong Company's subsidiaries were suspected of major job-related crimes, and upon investigation and verification, it should be found that they had major meritorious performance. Article 8 of the Opinions of the Supreme People's Court on Several Specific Issues Concerning the Handling of Voluntary Surrender and Meritorious Service stipulates that whether or not a defendant with meritorious service circumstances is given a lenient punishment and the extent of the lenient punishment shall be given consideration to the facts of the crime, the nature of the crime, the circumstances of the crime, the harmful consequences, the social impact, and the subjective malignancy of the defendant. Although there are meritorious circumstances, but the circumstances of the crime are particularly heinous, the consequences of the crime are particularly serious, and the defendant's subjective malignancy is deep, a lenient punishment may be given. In this case, considering the overall situation in which Lai Xiaomin accepted a particularly large amount of bribes, the circumstances of the crime were particularly serious, the social impact was particularly bad, and the interests of the state and the people were particularly heavy, the circumstances of his "major meritorious performance" were not enough to give a lenient punishment. Moreover, its meritorious performance is different from that of ordinary meritorious service. Lai Xiaomin, as the secretary of the party committee and chairman of Huarong Co., Ltd., has the responsibility of supervising and managing his subordinate employees. When it is perceived that subordinates may use their positions to facilitate the acceptance of bribes, they not only do not stop it, but instead use their respective powers with their subordinates to provide assistance for the same matter entrusted by the same briber, and accept bribes separately, until they are investigated before reporting and exposing, and the nature and characteristics of their meritorious service are obviously different from those of ordinary meritorious service. Because the person Lai Xiaomin reported and exposed belonged to the senior management personnel of the subsidiary company, who had the responsibility of supervision, and the criminal clues reported and Lai Xiaomin's own bribery behavior were for the same project of the same briber, no lenient punishment was given for his major meritorious performance.

III. How to deal with the assets involved in this case?

In this case, the case-handling organs have sealed and seized more than 1.7 billion yuan of stolen money and stolen goods, and most of the stolen money and stolen goods have been seized. After the judgment takes effect, our hospital will dispose of the property involved in the case in accordance with relevant laws and regulations, hand it over to the state treasury or return it to the relevant units. The insufficient part will continue to be recovered by our hospital.

(CCTV reporter Xi Danni)

(Edited by Han Yonghui)