According to relevant reports, Chen Shaojie, chairman of the board of directors and CEO of Douyu, has been arrested by the Chengdu police around November 16, 2023, although he has been released from detention around the Spring Festival in 2024 and has been released on bail pending trial, but what awaits him will be more than 5 years of actual punishment.
Chen Shaojie, born in the 80s, was born in 1984, since the 5th grade of primary school, he has been obsessed with games, in 2010, Chen Shaojie bought the domestic "originator of the second yuan website" station A, and established the "live broadcast" channel of station A. Four years later, he became independent of the "Shengbo" channel from Station A and renamed it "Douyu TV". In 2019, Chen Shaojie ranked 1507th on the Hurun Report with a wealth of 2.5 billion yuan.
After the success, Chen Shaojie floated, for the sake of the company and personal interests, he became more and more bold in business, with young and energetic, Chen Shaojie even desperately let go of his hands and feet to encourage a more radical "new business model", and turned a blind eye to the repeated violations of the platform "playing side ball" and illegal phenomena, which eventually led to him himself violating the law and embarking on the road of crime.
According to the investigation, there have long been very serious problems with the Douyu platform. Among them, some people have installed gambling games in the live video broadcast platform, and the anchor recommends them to players in the live broadcast, and obtains gift income and realizes it through the way of "heroes fighting monsters".
Some enter the live broadcast room during the live lottery period and participate in the lottery by paying for "cards" and swiping virtual gifts.
The public security department revealed that some games on the Douyu platform are typical roulette probabilistic games, with no game skills and obvious gambling nature. As of the time of being caught, the direct planner Fu Moulong and others organized a total of 4,267 lottery draws, with more than 4.42 million people participating, and nearly 120 million yuan in gambling funds.
After trial, the Dujiangyan Court held that Fu Moulong and others used the live broadcast room of the platform to organize gambling activities in the form of a lottery, and the circumstances were serious, and their actions constituted the crime of opening a casino, and were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from six to three years and fines.
Obviously, the Douyu platform is suspected of gathering people to gamble through the network for the purpose of profit, and at the same time, the platform is suspected of establishing a gambling website on the computer network to provide various conveniences for the gambling website, including background technical support, etc. As the founder of the Douyu platform, Chen Shaojie's behavior of establishing a website to provide others with gambling organizations and profiting from it naturally constitutes the crime of opening a casino, and it falls within the scope of serious circumstances. Because the "serious circumstances" of the crime of opening a casino as provided for in the second paragraph of Article 303 of the Criminal Law include:
(1) The cumulative amount of profits from the tap reaches 30,000 yuan or more;
(2) The cumulative amount of gambling funds reaches 300,000 yuan or more;
(3) The cumulative number of gambling participants reaches 120 or more;
(4) After establishing a gambling website, organizing gambling by providing it to others, the amount of unlawful gains is 30,000 yuan or more;
(5) Participating in the sharing of profits from gambling websites, where the amount of unlawful gains is 30,000 yuan or more, and so forth.
According to the sentencing standards for the new "crime of opening a casino" that came into effect in 2021, that is, the second paragraph of Article 303 of the Criminal Law [the crime of opening a casino], a person who opens a casino shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than five years, short-term detention or controlled release, and shall also be fined, and if the circumstances are serious, he shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than five years but not more than ten years, and shall also be fined.
Anyone who understands the law knows that before 2021, the sentencing standard for serious circumstances in the crime of opening a casino started at 3 years, but now it has been changed to 5 years, indicating that the state has significantly strengthened its crackdown on the crime of opening casinos through the Internet. Last year, the state also strengthened supervision of online games, live broadcasts and other industries, and introduced many policies. This time, Chen Shaojie just hit the muzzle of the gun, and he can only blame himself, and he can't blame others.
Regarding Chen Shaojie's release on bail pending trial, many netizens still have opinions, they think that Chen Shaojie's crime this time is more serious, and it is really not easy to be released on bail pending trial, and ordinary people really can't do it.
Of course, many netizens think that since Chen Shaojie can be released on bail, it means that the matter is not big, and there may be drama in the future, but is this really the case?
According to a report by Netinfo China, on May 8 last year, in response to serious ecological problems such as pornography and vulgarity in Douyu, the Cyberspace Administration of China instructed the Hubei Provincial Internet Information Office to send a working group to the Douyu platform to carry out a one-month centralized rectification and supervision. It seems that the platform can be kept after rectification, which can be regarded as a blessing in misfortune.
"Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily" on the 22nd, it was learned from people familiar with the matter that Chen Shaojie, founder and CEO of Douyu, was released on bail pending trial, but he will still be sentenced to actual punishment in the future!