On March 13, 2013, at the Capital International Airport, a middle-aged man with a proud look was escorting him toward the terminal building. Suddenly, several policemen dressed in plain clothes stopped in front of them, and the first policeman first revealed his identity, and then asked the middle-aged man: "Are you Liu Han?" ”
After receiving a positive answer, the police solemnly informed: "Liu Han, you are suspected of harboring and harboring, please cooperate with the police to investigate." ”
The middle-aged man first looked stunned, and then arrogantly and forcefully said to the police: "You are mistaken, right?!" The police did not explain too much, quickly took several people to the police car and disappeared into the vast traffic. (Note 1)
The middle-aged man who was taken away by the police is not an ordinary person, and he has multiple halos in him - Liu Han, the richest man in Sichuan, the actual controller of Hanlong Group, with more than 70 individual wholly-owned or shareholding enterprises and more than 40 billion yuan in assets under his name. In addition to his entrepreneur status, he also holds the political title of a member of the Standing Committee of the Sichuan Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
Why would such a prominent figure spanning two terms of politics and business be taken away by the police? From the judicial trial process around him in the future, we can see the true face of this "political and business celebrity" at close range.
Off-site hearings
Four days after Liu Han was taken away by the Beijing police, his younger brother Liu Wei, who was far away in Guanghan, Sichuan, was also arrested by the police, and then more than 30 people under the Hanlong Group were arrested one after another, and for a time rumors that Liu Han had an accident went away in Sichuan.
On March 22, 2013, the public security organs officially issued a notice saying that Liu Wei, a suspect wanted by the Ministry of Public Security for many years, had been arrested and arrested, and his brother Liu Han was under investigation by the public security organs on suspicion of harboring and harboring. This news verified the rumors, and it was like a boulder thrown into the water, causing ripples in Sichuan and even the whole country. People want to know, what happened to Liu Han? What will be the outcome he will face?
These two issues are also the focus of the next work of the judicial organs. The Ministry of Public Security set up a "1.10" special case team to investigate and investigate the circumstances involving Liu Han and others.
The reason why the Ministry of Public Security attaches so much importance to it is because Liu Han and his personnel have been involved in many vicious murder cases, and are suspected of having the characteristics of a mafia-type organization, which has a very bad social impact in Sichuan and surrounding provinces and cities.
In view of Liu Han's personal influence in the local area, in order to eliminate interference, the Ministry of Public Security assigned the case to the Hubei police investigation in April 2013.
On April 26, 2013, Liu Han was escorted to Xianning, Hubei Province, and the Hubei police immediately formed a special team to carry out a comprehensive investigation of Liu Han, Liu Wei and others based on Xianning. Through the investigation and collection of evidence by stripping away many clues involved in the case, the police gradually grasped a large amount of criminal evidence of the Liu brothers and their subordinates. (Note 2)
While the public security organs are working intensively to carry out investigations, the Xianning procuratorial organs have also begun to intervene synchronously. The Xianning People's Procuratorate has set up a special public prosecution team, with Chen Li, director of the Public Prosecution Division, as the first public prosecutor and Deputy Director Wang Qiong as the second public prosecutor.
The public prosecution special case team comprehensively understands the case from the perspective of the prosecutor, systematically collects public prosecution evidence, and submits its own supplementary investigation opinions to the public security organs.
With the full cooperation of the public security and procuratorial departments, one seemingly isolated case after another has been slowly pieced together, and a multi-level mafia-type gang led by Liu Han and assisted by Liu Wei and Sun Xiaodong has gradually surfaced.
A large number of investigations and examinations have laid a solid evidence foundation for the trial of the case, and a large network of public prosecutions against Liu Han's mafia-type organization has been woven.
At the same time, the defense also hired a defense team of up to 49 people to defend itself, of which the first defender was Zhang Qingsong, a well-known lawyer in china.
Zhang Qingsong has been rated as one of the "Top Ten News Figures in the National Lawyers' Circle" by authoritative media, and has held many positions such as a member of the All-China Lawyers Association and deputy director of the Professional Committee of the Beijing Lawyers Association, and has participated in many major cases such as Liu Xiaoqing's tax evasion case and the bribery case of a judge of a high people's court, and has rich experience in defense and profound professional ability in criminal law.
The defense team also carried out a comprehensive defense investigation before the trial, and under the legal empowerment, they fully met with the defendants involved in the case, consulted the case file information in detail, and prepared for the defense from the opposite direction of the public prosecution team, and a contest between spear and shield was quietly brewing.
Court clashes
On February 20, 2014, the Xianning Municipal People's Procuratorate formally filed a public prosecution with the Xianning People's Court against Liu Han, Liu Wei and 36 others involved in organized crime and murder, and the case of Liu Han and others officially entered the judicial trial stage.
On March 31, 2014, the Xianning Intermediate People's Court held a first-instance trial of the case. Due to the wide range of people involved in the case and the large number of individual cases, the Xianning Intermediate People's Court split the people involved in the case and divided it into 7 trial chambers for simultaneous public trial. Among them, Liu Han and his cases were divided into the first trial court.
In court, the prosecutor first read out the indictment and charged Liu Han and other defendants with suspected criminal activities.
The indictment includes a number of cases involving intentional homicide, illegal detention and other crimes, all of which point to the same fact: the defendant Liu Han and his subordinates involved in the case are in line with the characteristics of the crime of organizing, leading, and participating in a mafia-type organization.
After the indictment was read, the court allowed Liu Han to make a personal statement about the content of the public prosecution. Liu Han put on an innocent look and said: "I was shocked, overnight I changed from an entrepreneur to a leader of a triad organization, and everything said in the indictment, I don't know, have nothing to do with me." ”
"I don't know" and "have nothing to do with me" also became the fixed terms for Liu Han's subsequent self-defense and shirking responsibility for each case.
The only crime Liu Han confessed to was the crime of harboring, and he provided funds to help his brother hide even though he knew that his brother Liu Wei was listed as a wanted criminal by the public security organs.
In order to let his brother escape the police arrest, he even made illegal demands to the leaders of the provincial public security department in the name of the standing committee of the provincial CPPCC committee.
Under the circumstance that the facts are clear and the evidence is sufficient, Liu Han chose to avoid the serious and admit that he had covered up, but at the same time argued that he did not know that there was also a crime of shielding between his relatives, and beautified his illegal behavior with family affection.
Liu Han's defense lawyer team focused on refuting the allegations of crimes of mafia-type organizations in the content of the public prosecution, arguing that the witness testimony mentioned in the indictment was only based on personal perception and social experience, and was not a fact of theory.
They also cite examples such as "many members do not know each other" and "the common uniform statute of non-mafia-type organizations" to negate the prosecutor's accusations against mafia-type organizations.
Based on the definition of mafia-type organizations in the mainland criminal law, the public prosecutor team conducted arguments and analysis one by one from the aspects of the organizational characteristics, economic characteristics, behavioral characteristics, and illegal control characteristics of Liu Han and his gang, and combined with a large amount of evidence, deduced the defendant's defense's error of confusing selective characteristics with statutory characteristics.
By listing a large number of violent crimes, it also reveals that there is a violent culture within the Liu Han organization that is equivalent to the discipline of the rules and regulations of the mafia-type organization, and the essence of the confrontation between the Liu Han organization and the mainstream society is pointedly explained. (Note 3)
On the afternoon of April 2, 2014, the prosecutor presented 17 firearms of various types and thousands of rounds of bullets collected from Liu Hantuan, pushing the entire trial process to a climax.
When the bailiffs carried the illegal guns and ammunition fixed to the display board to the crowd, the scene of the trial suddenly became silent, and even the defendant's defense team was shocked by the physical evidence.
The prosecutor asked the defendant: If it were not for a mafia-type organization, how could a normal company require employees to illegally possess a gun? If you are a normal employee of an enterprise, how can you accept the boss's instructions to commit a weaponized crime?
In the face of the evidence, the defendant's defense lawyer had to express that he had no objection to the objective existence of firearms, and instead put forward Liu Han's personal view that there was no connection with the gun trade and organized crime. Liu Han also stated that he had never touched a gun, let alone instigated murder.
Liu Han and his defense team are well aware that once it is found to be intentional homicide, the legal consequences will be very serious and the sentence will be very different. The prosecution also took whether Liu Han had ever instructed the gang members to kill people as a breakthrough in pursuing their true criminal responsibility, and a new round of competition between the prosecution and defense began again.
Break through the defensive line
Long before the trial, the prosecution focused its investigation on a shooting in 1999. At that time, the victim Wang Yongcheng threatened to blow up the Hanlong Group bowling alley because of a conflict with the Hanlong Group.
Sun Xiaodong, then general manager of Hanlong Group, informed Liu Han of the news, and Liu Han instructed Sun Xiaodong to send someone to "kill" Wang Yongcheng. At the behest of Liu Han, Sun Xiaodong arranged for his subordinates Sun Huajun and Miao Jun to lead people to kill Wang Yongcheng at gunpoint.
Subsequently, Liu Han, through Sun Xiaodong, gave Sun and Miao monetary and vehicle rewards, and assisted them in escaping and hiding.
During the review and prosecution, the two main prosecutors, Chen Li and Wang Qiong, of the procuratorate's special case team, interrogated Liu Han many times, and Liu Han always claimed that he "did not know Wang Yongcheng and had no knowledge of his murder." Later, the special case team changed direction and focused its investigation on other people involved in the case.
Through the interrogation of the other 8 suspects in the case one by one, the special case team finally obtained detailed evidentiary materials, and all the evidence could be corroborated with each other, forming a set of strict "evidence chain".
Among the 8 suspects involved in the case, Sun Xiaodong's testimony is undoubtedly the most important, he is the core person closest to Liu Han, and he is also the key person who carries on the case, and he holds the evidence directly pointing directly to Liu Han.
The special case personnel of the procuratorate interrogated Sun Xiaodong many times, taking advantage of him, and finally made Sun Xiaodong wake up, he began to regret what he had done in the past, knowing that following Liu Han was actually taking a road of no return.
After the trial, Liu Han still insisted that he did not know Wang Yongcheng, and even though the prosecutor presented the testimony of other people involved in the case, including Sun Xiaodong, Liu Han still denied it.
More than a dozen lawyers from its defense lawyer team also took turns to refute the prosecutor's views and evidence, and even took advantage of the opportunity to question the defendant Liu Han to deliberately induce, and the prosecution and defense were fierce in court, and the atmosphere was deadlocked for a time. Finally, Liu Han made a request to let Sun Xiaodong come to court and confront him face to face.
Sun Xiaodong used to obey Liu Han's words, and Liu Han believed that with his psychological deterrence against Sun Xiaodong, he would never dare to testify against himself in person.
Although the prosecution believes that Sun Xiaodong can realistically restore the original face of the matter, there is an uncertain factor that also makes them drum in their hearts.
It turned out that at this time, Sun Xiaodong had serious physical problems and was being hospitalized, and there was great uncertainty about whether he could testify in court, which cast an unknown shadow on the key battle launched by the prosecution against the defendant.
On April 12, Sun Xiaodong suddenly appeared in the first trial court, and the murder of Wang Yongcheng, which had been temporarily suspended, continued to be tried. Wang Qiong asked Sun Xiaodong questions on behalf of the prosecution.
"Were you instructed to kill Wang Yongcheng?" Wang Qiong went straight to the subject. "Yes", Sun Xiaodong did not hesitate at all. "At the behest of whom?" Wang Qiong then asked. "Liu Han", Sun Xiaodong replied bluntly and confessed the specific details of Liu Han's instructions to kill Wang Yongcheng.
Sun Xiaodong's truthful confession completely exceeded Liu Han's expectations, and he asked Sun Xiaodong angrily, "Didn't I let you educate him?" Sun Xiaodong replied, "No, you asked me to do it!" Sun Xiaodong was like a different person, completely ignoring Liu Han's hints.
Liu Han was completely confused, and he revealed flaws in his panic—the hint he gave to Sun Xiaodong contradicted what he said about "not knowing Wang Yongcheng". Wang Qiong seized on his flaws in time to ask questions, Liu Han was dumbfounded, his defense line had been torn apart, and the trial had entered a turning point. (Note 4)
Husband and wife meet
On April 16, a special witness was brought to court, and the appearance of this person gave Liu Han even greater shock, causing him to collapse and cry on the spot, and this person was Liu Han's ex-wife, Yang Xue.
Yang Xue divorced Liu Han a year before the East Window Incident, and the two lived together for 16 years and had a son.
After the divorce, Yang Xue lived alone with the child, but her contact with Liu Han was not interrupted, and Yang Xue was still involved in many things about Liu Han, so she knew more about the situation of Liu Han and his subordinates, so the judge arranged for her to participate in the interrogation of some cases in court.
Although Liu Han has divorced Yang Xue, he still has a deep attachment to this woman who accompanied him all the way ups and downs. He knew in advance that Yang Xue would testify in court that day, so he was always restless and kept looking at the entrance and exit of the court. When Yang Xue was escorted into the courtroom by two female bailiffs, Liu Han's eyes never left her again, and two tears kept swirling in his eye sockets.
According to the needs of the case investigation, the judge asked Liu Han to ask Yang Xue, and Liu Han did not ask questions related to the case, but asked Yang Xue softly: "What crime did they prosecute you?" Yang Xue shook his head: "I haven't received a formal prosecution yet." ”
Obviously, Liu Han was very concerned about what kind of accusations Yang Xue would be subjected to, and he raised his voice and said, "Don't they know what crimes they are prosecuting you?" Yang Xue paused for a moment, then replied, "Maybe it's the crime of harboring." ”
Hearing Yang Xue say that he might also be punished, Liu Han couldn't hold back any longer, tears came out of his eyes, and he cried while saying loudly: "The person I'm most sorry for is you!" ”
At this time, Liu Han and the first trial were completely sentenced to two people, Liu Han was arrogant, stubborn and cunning at the beginning of the trial, as the court restored his true face step by step, coupled with the appearance of Yang Xue, Liu Han showed a deep and remorseful side of human nature.
Because Liu Han did not ask questions related to the facts of the case, coupled with emotional instability, the judge temporarily suspended the communication between Liu Han and Yang Xue, allowing Yang Xue to answer the questions of other defenders first.
After Liu Han's mood slowly calmed down, the judge allowed him to ask Yang Xue questions again, this time Liu Han still did not mention the issue of the case. Instead, he asked Yang Xue how he felt after living together for 16 years, and without waiting for Yang Xue to answer, the judge once again suspended the communication between the two that had nothing to do with the facts of the case.
When Yang Xue was about to be taken out of court after completing the questioning, Liu Han realized that this might be the last time he and his ex-wife were confronted, and his emotions were out of control again and he began to cry.
He said to Yang Xue with tears in his eyes: "I am sorry for you, you took good care of our children and took good care of your mother..." Yang Xue also turned his head to look at Liu Han in the defendant's seat and said loudly: "You can rest assured that you can raise the child as an adult and take good care of the mother..." Seeing this scene, everyone present was moved.
But the law is serious, the detours must pay a price, Liu Han used the mistakes he once made to bury his family affection, but also buried his future. (Note 5)
On April 19, the trial was adjourned. On May 23, the Intermediate People's Court of Xianning City, Hubei Province, publicly pronounced a verdict: defendants Liu Han, Liu Wei, and five others were sentenced to death for organizing, leading a mafia-type organization, and intentional homicide, and the other defendants were also punished according to the severity of their crimes.
Liu Han was not satisfied with the first-instance trial and appealed to the Hubei Provincial Higher People's Court, which upheld the first-instance judgment in the second instance and reported it to the Supreme People's Court for review. After review by the Collegial Panel of the Supreme People's Law, Liu Han's death sentence was finally approved.
On February 9, 2015, Liu Han was executed by the Xianning Intermediate People's Court in accordance with law and confiscated all personal property. This once famous but guilty tyrant has completely disappeared from this world.
After Liu Han's death, the four shareholders of Hanlong Group were identified by the court as the nominee holders of Liu Han's shares, and according to the death sentence of "confiscation of all personal property", the shares held by the four people were seized in December of the same year; the assets under the name of Hanlong Group were auctioned to Sichuan Guoke Company in 2018.
In December 2020, Sichuan Hanlong (Group) Co., Ltd. was completely deregistered. In 2021, Liu Canglong, a cousin who was closely related to Liu Han's life, the actual controller of Sichuan Hongda Industry, was also arrested for economic crimes; Liu Han's mother was seriously ill because of the stimulation, and her life could not take care of herself, and her ex-wife Yang Xue fulfilled her promise in court and took on the heavy responsibility of raising children and taking care of her mother...
epilogue
The glory of the past has disappeared, and everything today is human, if Liu Han has underground knowledge, he will definitely regret what he did in those years!
References and notes
(Note 1) "Justice May Be Late, But It Will Never Be Absent: A Record of the Collapse of The Mafia-type Organization of Liu Han and Liu Weite" (Xinhua Daily Telegraph, May 25, 2014, 004th Edition)
(Note 2) "The Collapse of Liu Han and Liu Wei Group" (CCTV Social and Law Channel "Frontline" column)
(Note 3) "17 Days of Trial and Wisdom Struggle with Underworld Forces: Remembering the Public Prosecutor of the "Liu Han and Liu Weite Case of the Great Criminal Gang Involving the Mafia" of the People's Procuratorate of Xianning City, Hubei Province" ("Servant of the People", March 2015 issue)
(Note 4) "The Downfall of Liu Han liu wei's underworld organization" (People's Daily, May 24, 2014, 004th edition)
(Note 5) "Liu Han's Ex-Wife Testifies in Court, Liu Han Cries and Entrusts His Mother's Son to His Ex-Wife" (Hubei Daily, April 19, 2014)