The former procurator was imprisoned for being involved in a fraud case, and then reported in the detention center under his real name that a retired judge of the Liaoning Provincial High Court had improperly interfered in the case and was suspected of having a huge amount of assets of unknown origin.
Sun Liang, a 38-year-old prosecutor at the Wanghua District Procuratorate in Fushun City, Liaoning Province, was imprisoned in 2018 for being involved in a fraud case.
On December 24, 2019, the Huanggu District People's Court of Shenyang City (hereinafter referred to as the "Huanggu District Court") rendered a judgment, found Li Junjun and Sun Liang guilty of fraud, sentenced them to 14 years and 6 months in prison and 10 years and 6 months respectively, and ordered them to return 7.01 million yuan to the victim Wang Guirong.
Caijing reporters' investigation confirmed that the victim in the case, Wang Guirong, had served as a judge in the criminal division of the Liaoning Provincial High People's Court (hereinafter referred to as the "Liaoning Provincial High Court"), and she had retired in 2013. Sun Liang and Wang Guirong's son, Sun Weize, were once graduate students.
After the incident, Sun Liang found clues such as Wang Guirong's interference in the investigators' handling of the case from the "Evidence Collection Report" issued by the police, reported Wang Guirong in real name at the detention center, and pointed out that he was suspected of a huge amount of assets of unknown origin.
Sun Liang's 70-year-old mother, Li Huanying, has been running between Fushun and Shenyang since her only son was arrested, delivering reporting materials to relevant departments. Since her husband died of illness more than 20 years ago, she single-handedly provided for Sun Liang to finish college until he was admitted to the Fushun City Procuratorate.
On September 8, 2020, the Shenyang Intermediate People's Court (hereinafter referred to as the "Shenyang Intermediate Court") issued a criminal ruling, finding that the court of first instance had violated legal procedural procedures, revoked the huanggu district court's judgment on Sun Liang's case, and remanded it for retrial.
As of now, the Huanggu District Court has not reopened the case.
The retired judge claimed to have been defrauded of tens of millions of dollars
On March 30, 2013, the Standing Committee of the Liaoning Provincial People's Congress announced the appointment and dismissal list, dismissing Wang Guirong from his position as a judge of the Liaoning Provincial High Court. This year, Wang Guirong just turned 60 years old and retired at the normal age.
Wang Guirong stated to the court that her son Sun Weize and Sun Liang were graduate students at Liaoning University, and that Sun Liang often visited her home and knew each other very well. In November 2014, after Sun Weize and his wife immigrated to New Zealand, Wang Guirong's family encountered problems and would also look for Sun Liang's help, and the relationship between the two families was very harmonious.
However, with the emergence of Sun Liang's classmate Li Junjun, the relationship between the two families has changed. On October 12, 2015, Li Junjun claimed that he urgently needed capital turnover and borrowed 1 million yuan from Wang Guirong, with the two parties agreeing on an annual interest rate of 36%, and Sun Liang was the guarantor of the loan.
Since then, the relationship between Li Junjun and Wang Guirong has warmed up, and they have also trusted each other. As of December 18, 2017, Wang Guirong and his family had remitted 18 funds to Li Junjun's bank account through the bank, totaling 9.067 million yuan.
Judicial documents show that Wang Guirong's second transfer to Li Junjun occurred on December 21, 2015, two months after the first loan of 1 million yuan. The reason for Li Junjun's borrowing this time was to allocate capital for shareholders, so Wang Guirong transferred 500,000 yuan to Li Junjun's account.
According to the audit report, Wang Guirong first lent Li Junjun 1 million yuan, which was due on October 12, 2016, and Li Junjun repaid Wang Guirong a total of 1.28 million yuan. Sun Liang said that since then, Wang Guirong has not mentioned the debt between Wang and Li to him.
In the two years from 2015 to 2017, Li Junjun borrowed 9.067 million yuan from Wang Guirong in the name of shareholder allocation, purchase of original shares, and benefit fees for the purchase of original shares. During the period, Li Junjun repaid a total of 1.5413 million yuan to Wang Guirong, including the initial principal and interest of the loan of 1 million yuan.
In fact, Wang Guirong transferred 9.067 million yuan to Li Junjun, of which 3.4 million yuan was credited to His securities account by Li Junjun, and most of the rest of the funds were used to repay debts. Because the shares bought by Li Junjun were covered, his capital turnover was in trouble, and he could not pay interest to Wang Guirong, and Wang Guirong finally chose to report the case.
Insiders told the "Finance" reporter that before the incident, Li Junjun was an employee of Fushun Rongda Investment Co., Ltd., which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fushun Caijin Investment Holding Group Limited Company, which is wholly owned by the Fushun Municipal Finance Bureau. And Li Junjun's family conditions are also very good, his father was originally a cadre of the Fushun Municipal Finance Bureau, now retired, and his mother is a local doctor.
Wang Guirong stated to the court that he knew Li Junjun through Sun Liang, and out of trust in Sun Liang, he lent nearly 10 million yuan to Li Junjun. And Sun and Li promised that Wang Guirong could charge proportional interest every month, and the funds were very safe, controlled by software, and when the stock fell to a certain extent, the software would automatically stop the loss.
Based on this, Wang Guirong reported to the Huashan Police Station of the Huanggu District Public Security Bureau in Shenyang, saying that Li Junjun and Sun Liang had defrauded 10.017 million yuan, and that the money was owned by his descendant Wei Ze, and he only kept it on his behalf.
According to the data, Wang Guirong and his son Sun Weize had a dispute over whether to choose to report the case to the police. Sun Weize, a former lawyer at Shenyang Duocheng Law Firm, believed that Li Junjun expected Wang Guirong not to report the case, while Wang Guirong believed that Sun Liang did not constitute a joint crime.
After that, Wang Guirong reached a consensus with his family, decided to report the case, and through local political and legal relations, listed Sun Liang as the main offender.
On September 14, 2018, the Huanggu District police criminally detained Li Junjun on suspicion of fraud, and a month later, Sun Liang was also criminally detained.
Sun Liang's mother, Li Huanying, told reporters that it was not Sun Liang who took the initiative to take Wang Guirong, whom Li Junjun knew, but Wang Guirong had previously promoted Tiens health products and repeatedly asked Sun Liang to recommend her offline. Sun Liang was hindered by his face, so he recommended Li Junjun to meet Wang Guirong, and in addition, it was Li Junjun himself who persuaded Wang Guirong to agree to the loan.
The first-instance judgment was revoked due to procedural violations
On January 17, 2019, the Huanggu District Public Security Bureau investigated and closed the case and transferred it to the Huanggu District People's Procuratorate (hereinafter referred to as the "Huanggu District Procuratorate") for review and prosecution. After accepting the case, the Huanggu District Procuratorate found that some of the facts were unclear, and it returned it to supplementary investigation twice, and because of the complexity of the case, the period for prosecution review was extended once.
On June 21 of the same year, the Huanggu District Procuratorate filed a public indictment with the Huanggu District Court, holding that the defendants Li Junjun and Sun Liang had used fictitious facts and concealed the truth to defraud others of their property for the purpose of illegal possession, and the amount was particularly huge, and their behavior violated the relevant provisions of the Criminal Law and was suspected of fraud.
Four months later, the case was heard in the Huanggu District Court, and the prosecution began to debate. Sun Liang's defender Yu Jie put forward a defense opinion, holding that the facts alleged by the public prosecution organs were unclear and the evidence was insufficient, and the accusation that Sun Liang had committed a crime was not established.
Yu Jie believes that Li Junjun fabricated facts to defraud Wang Guirong of money, and Sun Liang did not know it. Sun Liang's guarantee act was a civil dispute, and the money that Li Junjun obtained from Wang Guirong in the later period was not known to Sun Liang, and Wang Guirong did not transfer money to Sun Liang.
Li Junjun also admitted at the trial that Sun Liang did not conspire with him to commit fraud, sun Liang was only a civil guarantee act, and Sun Liang did not understand stock securities. Therefore, Sun Liang did not fabricate facts, conceal the truth, and did not carry out the wrong understanding behavior that caused Wang Guirong to fall into the disposal of property.
Yu Jie also pointed out that according to the "Outline for Returning Supplementary Investigation" issued to the police by the Huanggu District Procuratorate, in the process of investigation and handling of the case, the police not only arbitrarily rewrite the interrogation record, but also the interrogation record is inconsistent with the synchronous audio and video recording. Moreover, the police ignored the procuratorate's request to identify the main evidence in the Supplementary Investigation Outline.
Sun Liang and his defense lawyer requested at trial to retrieve a simultaneous audio and video recording of the police's interrogation of Li Junjun, but the Huanggu District police have not provided it so far.
On September 18, 2020, a letter issued by the Shenyang Intermediate People's Court to the Huanggu District Court showed that Li Junjun's three interrogation transcripts with simultaneous audio and video recordings were all made by the same investigator, and that the investigators had an interest in Wang Jiarong, and that two of the confessions were indeed problematic and had been withdrawn by the original public prosecution organ in court. Therefore, it is recommended to convene a pretrial conference to review the legality of Li Junjun's confession.
In the end, the Huanggu District Court did not accept Yu Jie's defense opinion, and on December 24, 2019, it issued a judgment, found Li Junjun and Sun Liang guilty of fraud, sentenced them to 14 years and 6 months in prison and 10 years and 6 months respectively, and ordered them to return Wang Guirong's 7.01 million yuan.
Dissatisfied with the first-instance judgment, Sun Liang appealed to the Shenyang Intermediate Court, requesting the Shenyang Intermediate Court to find out in accordance with the law that there were major procedural violations in this case, and should change the verdict to not guilty or remand for retrial.
Sun Liang's appeal of nearly 40,000 words not only requested the Shenyang Intermediate People's Court to change his verdict of innocence, but also accused the relevant case-handling personnel of exchanging voices with Wang Guirong and Sun Weize at all stages of case filing, investigation, interrogation, application for arrest, and approval of arrest, leaking investigation secrets, maliciously entering and leaving people, and suspected of accepting bribes, abusing their powers, and bending the law for personal gain.
The evidence for many of Sun Liang's allegations stemmed from the Forensic Report issued by the police. On October 23, 2018, in the process of investigating the case, the Huanggu District police collected evidence from a Huawei mobile phone used by Wang Guirong, and the WeChat chat record of the "Forensic Report" formed made the secret of Wang Guirong's family "exposed".
On September 8, 2020, the Shenyang Intermediate People's Court issued a criminal ruling, finding that the court of first instance had violated legal procedural procedures, revoking the Huanggu District Court's judgment on Sun Liang's case and remanding it for retrial.
The above-mentioned letter issued by the Shenyang Intermediate Court shows that the original judgment relied on the statement of the victim Wang Guirong to determine the facts of fraud, and that there were indeed certain problems in the evidence in this case in the case where there was only verbal evidence. In addition, the procurator of the Shenyang Municipal Procuratorate also issued an opinion, requesting that the investigators be replaced, the record of Li Junjun's interrogation be remade, and the evidence should be re-presented and cross-examined after the evidence was perfected.
At the same time, the letter requested that Sun Liang's defender submit that Wang Guirong repeatedly claimed that he had a close relationship with the Huanggu District Court and had worked in the Huanggu District Court for many years, and that the current vice president, Zhang Mou, had been Wang's clerk, and that there was evidence in the volume that Wang Guirong had contacted the relevant personnel of the Huanggu District Court for approving sun Liang's arrest and other issues, so the recusal issue raised by the defender should also be resolved in the pre-trial meeting of the original trial.
Real-name report Wang Guirong
Although Sun Liang was in prison, he still stripped away the cocoon from the "Evidence Collection Report", and at the same time, based on his understanding of Wang Guirong's family, he wrote a report letter and submitted it to the discipline inspection and supervision departments at all levels.
Sun Liang said in the whistleblower letter that Wang Guirong has tens of millions of yuan of assets in his name, of which there are four real estates alone, including a 416-square-meter store house with a construction area of 416 square meters (worth 6 million yuan) in Beigushan Road, Yuhong District, a property in Nujiang North Street in Yuhong District, a property in Venice City in Haikou, Hainan, and a property in Dalian.
In addition, Wang Guirong's personal bank deposits are more than 10 million yuan, and the illegal purchase of foreign exchange is for his descendant Wei Ze to buy a villa in New Zealand, worth millions of yuan. In addition, in order to hide bank deposits, Wang Guirong asked her husband to buy ONE coins (Vicar coins) with cash, suspected of illegally transferring property abroad.
Wang Guirong said in a WeChat chat with his family that Vicarbon can solve the problem of cross-border transfer payment, can avoid the bank's third-party transaction medium, and point-to-point seconds to the account. Wang Guirong's husband purchased ONE coins in cash on three occasions, a total of 19,036 coins, and the purchase price of each Vicar coin was 220 yuan, spending a total of 4.18 million yuan.
Sun Liang said in the whistleblower letter that the WeChat chat records in the Forensic Report showed that Wang Guirong acted as a judicial broker in an arbitration case. After "greeting" with the relevant case-handling personnel, Wang Guirong instructed his son Sun Weize to send the benefit fee to the relevant personnel's son's account.
WeChat chat records show that Wang Guirong once transferred 40,000 yuan to his nephew Wang Lu to contact the investigators in Sun Liang's case. Sun Weize also chose an imported blanket for the other party, and the other party replied, "Brother, don't bother, my work is all a matter, I am embarrassed if you do this."
The above-mentioned letter issued by the Shenyang Intermediate Court shows that the investigators in Sun Liang's case accepted Wang Guirong's invitation to eat and accepted his gifts.
Sun Liang believes that Wang Guirong interfered in the handling of the case by paying bribes to the case-handling personnel, and used his son Sun Weize's status as a lawyer to amass wealth, seriously damaging the judicial environment.
Sun Liang's mother, Li Huanying, told reporters that she and her lawyers had sent a whistleblower letter to state organs at all levels, asking the discipline inspection and supervision department to file a case against Wang Jiarong and his family. She believes that whether it is the WeChat records of Wang Guirong's mother and son, or the bank flows identified by the judicial organs, it can be proved that Wang Guirong has found relevant case-handling personnel to frame Sun Liang in order to recover the loan.
In August 2021, the reporter repeatedly wrote to Wang Guirong on the issues involved in Sun Liang's report letter. As of press time, Wang Guirong has not replied.
Source: Financial Magazine