Is it an individual crime or multiple crimes when someone commits a duty-related crime and then conceals the illegal gains?

In foreign-funded enterprises and private enterprises, the top-3 common duty-related crimes are: the crime of job-related embezzlement, the crime of accepting bribes by non-state functionaries, and the crime of misappropriating funds. The standards for the completion of these crimes usually involve the actual acquisition or control of property, etc. However, during the process of disposing of the illicit money and goods, the perpetrator may carry out other acts to conceal the illegal gains. That is, in relation to the upstream crime of the duty-related crime, there are also downstream criminal acts.

The general theory in criminal law holds that the subject of the crime of concealing or disguising the proceeds of crime generally does not include the perpetrator of the upstream crime, but rather other people who assist in carrying out the acts of concealing or disguising. Therefore, for a long time, the acts of the perpetrator of the upstream crime to further conceal or disguise the proceeds of the crime and their earnings have usually been regarded as the subsequent handling of the upstream crime by the perpetrator and absorbed by the upstream crime. Therefore, it is generally not subject to separate conviction and punishment or combined punishment for multiple crimes.

However, the Amendment (XI) to the “Criminal Law” implemented in March 2021 changed this approach and expanded the scope of the subject of the crime of money laundering. That is, for those who commit duty-related crimes, if they further conceal and disguise the proceeds of their crimes by laundering money, they would commit the crime of “self-money laundering”, which can be punished concurrently with the upstream crime. For example, in the case of (2022) Hu 0106 Xing Chu No. 24, the court found that the defendant Liu deposited CNY 200,000 of bribes received from Wang into his own account with Shanghai Pudong Development Bank in several installments through ATM deposits. Later, he successively transferred CNY160,000 to the futures trading margin account of Guotai Junan Futures Co., Ltd. and used it for futures product trading. The court held that “the defendant Liu concealed and disguised the source and nature of the proceeds of the bribery crime through methods such as transferring funds and investing, and should be investigated for criminal liability by combined punishment for multiple crimes including the crime of job-related embezzlement and the crime of money laundering.”

In addition to the perpetrators of duty-related crimes themselves, in practice, their spouses, relatives, friends, colleagues, etc. who carry out acts of concealing or disguising the proceeds of crime may be suspected of three charges: (1) the crime of money laundering, (2) the crime of concealing or disguising the proceeds of crime, and (3) the crime of the proceeds of crime.

For example, in the case of (2024) Hu 0115 Xing Chu No. 298, the defendants Gao knew that the huge amount of cash handed over by her ex-husband Wang might be from bribery. However, Gao still provided her personal bank accounts to Wang and assisted him in transferring the bribed money by depositing the cash first and then making the transfer. Eventually, the court found that her acts had constituted the crime of money laundering. Another example is that in the case of (2020) Liao 0103 Xing Chu No. 212, Wang and Liu knew that Lin had illegally embezzled the company’s funds, both of them used their own companies; account to exchange the transfer checks issued by the company for Lin on multiple occasions, transferring a total of more than CNY37 million. In the end, they were found to have constituted the crime of concealing or disguising the proceeds of crime.

Therefore, when handling duty-related crime cases, it is necessary to pay attention to whether there are downstream criminal acts in the subsequent disposal of the illicit money and goods, so as to dig deeper on those duty-related crimes.