Does it belong to natural person crime or unit crime if managers sell unlisted company stock right under the company’s instruction? On November 9th, Shanghai No.1 Intermediate people’s court brought a final verdict that such action belongs to unit crime. The sentence to three defendants was changed and one of the defendants Li Yi was released on the court.

On November 20th 2006, Li Yi and another 2 person were held in custody suspected to be involved in illegal dealing crime and then were approved to be arrested. Before arrest, Li Yi was the business manager in one of the offices of Zhongding Property Transaction Co. Ltd Shanghai Branch. The procuratorate accused that since January 2006, Li Yi together with head in Shanghai Branch Li Junrong, Office Manager Wang Weiqing, contacted several natural person shareholder including Xi’an Triones Digital Information Co. Ltd without the approval and license by China Securities Regulatory Commission. They instigated Cheng and other 37 people to buy 430000 shares of stock of the above-mentioned unlisted companies from 3.3 yuan to 4.5 yuan per share through random telephone calls, totaling 1.57 million yuan.

Lawyer Li Xiaohua in Shanghai Lixiaohua Law Firm was the counsel for Li Yi. He held that though Li Yi’s action constituted crime, the crime belongs to unit crime. Li was finishing tasks assigned by the company and had given himself up. However, the court didn’t accept Lawyer Li Xiaohua’s opinion in the first trial and gave verdict to the three defendants as natural person crime. Li Yi was sentenced 5 years and fined 150,000 yuan. Besides, Li Junrong was sentenced 4 years according to his giving up situation and Wang Weiqing was sentenced 5 years.

Li Yi appealed against the verdict and continued to hire Lawyer Li Xiaohua as the counselor in the second instance. Lawyer Li Xiaohua was the part-time professor in Law School of Shanghai Jiaotong University as he engaged in defending criminal cases, so he has deep research on criminal law. After a careful study on the case again, he affirmed that his idea in the first instance was correct, therefore, he made some supplement to the defense in the first instance and finished a 10-page statement of defense to the court.

The second instance court accepted the opinion of Lawyer Li Xiaohua and made verdict as unit crime and acknowledged the giving up situation of Li Yi. Li Yi was sentenced 1 year with 1 year probation and imposed a fine of 40,000 yuan. Li Junrong and Wang Weiqing were sentenced 2 years imprisonment.