Research Into Some Issues Concerning Corporate Crimes

Corporate crime, a worldwide subject in criminal field, is paid much attention to by researchers and practitioners in many countries. With the rapid development of economy and the increasing trend of economical globalization, corporate crimes have been committing more and more in various forms and lead to serious damages to the economic development and safety of many counties. Many counties have amended and revised their corporate laws, at the same time, the corporate governing structure, corporate form and its operating form, etc. have been developed a lot in theory and practice. Under such circumstances, there arise new and urgent subjects about criminal legislation and punishment of corporate crime on basis of traditional theory. We should research them deeply and systemically. This thesis researches into some important issues on corporate crime and has been divided into eight chapters, including:Chapter One Summary of and Review on Chinese and Foreign Writings about Corporate CrimeThis chapter roundly introduces and analyzes the general situation of researches on corporate crime and the evaluations of corporate crime theory in some main counties and regions such as the United States, Japan, Germany, Taiwan and Mainland of China. Criminal laws in common law jurisdiction, represented by criminal law of the United States, research corporate crime mainly from the perspective of white-collar crime, while criminal laws in civil law jurisdiction, represented by Criminal Law of Japan, research it more from the perspective of the relationship between enterprise organization theory and enterprise crime, and some are from the perspective of criminology, which is a little different from the situations in china where the researches are conducted more on the criminal liabilities concerned when a company is regarded as subject of crime and the criminal liabilities concerned during the whole process from the company's establishment to its termination. Such differences about corporate crime research between China and foreign countries can be attributed to four aspects as follows: Firstly, the definition of corporate crime is a litter broad; Secondly, the researches on corporate crime theory are very deep; Thirdly, the legislation concerning corporate crime is in a high level; Lastly, the researching angle of view, ways, scope of corporate crime attach more importance to application of authentic data and empirical study on account of the developed judicial statistics in foreign counties.Chapter Two Basic Theory of Corporate CrimeThis chapter firstly defines Company which has different meanings in the name itself, its intension and extension in countries and regions because of the differences of legal tradition and legal systems. Secondly, this chapter studies the definition, contemporary general situation of corporate crime and its status in the system of criminal law. Carl·Marx considered corporations as one of the tools that is used to exploit workers, then make them lose humanities and exploit the reasonable pay of their labor. He held the opinion that corporation had its negative aspect. At present, countries in the world tend to regulate the corporate activities by means of criminal punishment or such similar means. The scope of punishing corporations is becoming bigger and the means of such punishment tend to be more various.Chapter Three Legislative Theory of Corporate CrimeThis chapter roundly introduces and analyzes commercial law, corporate law and criminal law in countries all over the world and makes comparisons in legislative contents and modes of different corporate crime. There is a trend of unification of corporate system in countries. Therefore there appear several unified representations on corporate crime and its punishing rules. At the same time, due to the differences in the economic level, social and cultural background and legal tradition in various countries, there are different problems arising in the process of implementing corporate system and differences in criminal name, basic type, its relationship with corporate form and legislative mode of corporate crime. So it's necessary to extract corporate crime from unit crime and master the legislative systems macroscopically of corporate crime in various countries and discuss their merits which can be imitated by China.Chapter Four New Corporate Law Theory and Corporate CrimeThis chapter studies deeply Piercing the Corporate Veil and One-Person Corporation stipulated in the new corporate law and corporate crime. Piercing the corporate veil decides whether a company or an enterprise has subject qulification and thereby is related to unit crime stipulated in Criminal Law of china. This chapter then explores the influences on the application of unit crime and piercing the corporate veil to the criminal liabilities of one-person corporation by piercing the corporate veil in new corporate law from the angles of the initiation and development of legal corporate personality in Chinese and foreign countries and the research on the theoretical grounds, jurisprudential meaning and characteristics of piercing the corporate veil.Chapter Five Internationalization of Corporate Crime and Its legal ControlThis chapter studies the internationalization of corporate crime, its challenge and the measures employed to handle it. To handle the serious challenge arising from internationalization of corporate crime, international society cooperates with each other actively and under the frame provided by various international organizations, conducts international legal practice on control over corporate crime by distinguishing cross-national crime, international crime and internationalization of crime and analyzing the present situation, characteristics as well as reasons of internationalization of corporate crime. In general international criminal law is presented in international treaties in the form of dispersive and isolated substantive rules governing a single issue. In terms of the present development, international legal control situation of corporate crime is oriented by United Nations and supplemented by various regional organizations. International legislation of corporate crime is mainly presented as various kinds of international treaties stipulated by their organizations.Chapter Six Crime occurred in the Course of Corporate Establishment.Limited Liability Company and Joint-stock Liability Company are two forms of company expressly provided in the corporate law of China and the main organizational form of enterprises in China. The special characters of the Limited Liability Company and Joint-stock Liability Company indicate that the registered capital of a company is the basic sign of its economic capability and the ability to bear risks and debts. Considering the judicial practices, the crime occurred in the course of corporate establishment is mainly crime on corporate capital. Therefore, this chapter selects some typical crimes on corporate capital such as crime of fictitious registered capital, crime of false capital contribution and flight of capital contribution and analyzes their crime constitution and difficult problems in the judicial recognition. Based on these analyses, the author hold the opinion that crime on corporate capital is a kind of statutory crime and its character of law breaking and criminal offence should be ultimately determined by virtue of some prohibitive norms in the relevant corporate and economic management regulations. Criminal law shall take relevant economic statues as its premises instead of regulating directly corporate capital.Chapter Seven Crime in the Process of Corporate OperationBased on exploration of breach of trust in China from the perspective of criminal law, we can infer that it's a great waste of judicial resources to make accusation of misappropriation. We can accuse crime of breaching trust technically and the equivalent conducts shall be governed as crime of breaching trust such as Crime of Illegally Operating the Same Business in the corporate operation, a kind of corporate breach of trust. In the operation of state-owned companies, the phenomena of distributing state-owned assets privately, crime of fraudulent practice and converting stock by low price, selling state-owned assets, colluding to auction state-owned assets are very sincere and lead to a great deal of loss of state-owned assets. Criminal law OF 1997 firstly adopts and clarifies the concept of state-owned assets in theory, explains some legal issues in the practice concerning crime of distributing state-owned assets privately, crime of fraudulent practice and converting stock by low price, crime of selling state-owned assets, then protects state-owned assets and regulates system conversion.Chapter Eight Research into Crime in the Process of Corporate Termination, Taking Crime on Corporate BankruptcyIn the process of corporate establishment, company is established, whereas corporate bankruptcy and liquidation lead to corporate ultimate termination. Reasons for terminating a company in various counties summarily include bankruptcy and dissolution, in which bankruptcy is a important reason for corporate bankruptcy which is provided in various counties. Accordingly there arise a lot of lawbreaking conducts and crimes in the process of corporate bankruptcy which greatly damages the effective implementation of bankruptcy law and bring a great loss to the related parties. Therefore, it is in burning need to analyze the legislative regulations about in major developed countries and regions as well as legislative situation of fraudulent bankruptcy at present and legislative mode and system of bankrupt crime and explore and improve the provisions of bankrupt crime in The Amendments to the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China (VI),.Corporate crime is a complicated subject producing a lot of argument in the theory of criminal law. It is hard to focus study conducted macroscopically on a single point. Beyond the traditional research mode, from the comparative angle of view, this thesis selects some typical issues occurred from corporate establishment to termination to explore in the hope of increasing its practical value. At the same time, this thesis is to be improved in the theoretic depth and width concerning corporate crime in the future research and study.