Recently, Mr. Liang Yali, Senior Partner of King&Capital Law Firm and Director of King&Capital Criminal Defense Research Center, and Mr. Tang Wanzhuo, Assistant Lawyer of King&Capital Law Firm, handled the case of a legal representative of a Beijing Agricultural Research Institute being charged with the crime of contract fraud, and decided to revoke the verdict of the first instance and remanded the case to the original first instance court for a new trial.
The cause of the case: the economic dispute involving a foreign government loan program escalated into a criminal case.
The cause of this case was that the Poverty Alleviation Office of a certain city, with the assistance of the defendant, declared a foreign government loan for investment in an agricultural technology project, but the project was stalled because the Agricultural Research Institute (the technical support unit of the project, hereinafter referred to as the "Agricultural Research Institute"), the Poverty Alleviation Office, and the implementation unit of the project failed to cooperate with the project in accordance with the contract for a variety of reasons, which made the project stagnate and the advanced production technology could not be put into production. As a result, the project was stalled, the advanced production technology could not be put into production, and the expected revenue could not be obtained, which in turn led to the inability of the Poverty Alleviation Office to repay the loan to the foreign government as planned, and the local government was burdened with the loan and incurred losses. Thus, the case from the Agricultural Research Institute and the poverty alleviation office, the project implementation unit of the civil dispute between the criminal case, the local authorities to contract fraud on the parties to the indictment, accused of fraudulent project funds of more than 11.48 million yuan.
The first trial intervention: the complexity of the case is both the defense dilemma, but also the defense space
Liang Yali team of lawyers in the first trial stage of the case accepted the family and the Agricultural Research Institute of the commission, after reading the file, meeting and preliminary communication with the presiding judge, found that although the case involves a complex system of contract, the contract of the parties to the main body of the contradiction is prominent, but in fact in the fact that the evidence, the application of the law there is a space for the defense.
First of all, the prosecution of this case to determine the facts are mainly based on the evidence provided by the other party to the contract, the evidence provided by the defendant's initiative as well as the evidence in favor of the defendant's case is not comprehensive collection of the authorities. This case is essentially a contract dispute, and the contract three parties in the process of contract implementation of a large number of contradictions and differences, and then conflict of interest, based on this, the other side of the contract one-sided intercept part of the contract, the defendant and agricultural research institute to perform the contract evidence is not provided and recognized, resulting in the evidence in the case can not be comprehensively restored to the case in its entirety, the defendant is extremely unfavorable to the responsibility of the determination.
In this regard, Liang Yali lawyer team actively with the family and agricultural research institute staff to understand the situation and according to the law, collect, organize the objective evidence is conducive to proving the relevant facts of the case, re-combined the contract and norms of the case system, clear the rights and obligations of all the parties involved, through the evidence restore the contract signed, fulfillment, loss of the complete process, and ultimately formed the support of the defense of innocence point of view of the system of evidence, bound book submitted to the court in advance, and the defendant and the performance of contract. Bound into a book before the court submitted to the prosecution and the trial.
Secondly, this case involves the contract system, the normative system and the nature of the subject are complex and special, resulting in the case of defense difficulties and resistance. The contract system involved in this case is complex, including the general contract and subcontractor contract of the foreign government loan investment project, the agency procurement agreement signed between the domestic poverty alleviation office and the client unit, and the tripartite agreement signed between the client unit as the technical support unit and the poverty alleviation office and the project implementation unit, and it involves the "Interim Measures for the Management of the Investment Projects of the International Financial Organizations and the Foreign Government Loans" and other administrative regulations. In addition, it involves administrative regulations such as the Interim Measures for the Administration of Investment Projects of International Financial Organizations and Foreign Government Loans, and the project is subject to the supervision of several administrative departments, which involves complicated legal norms and legal relations. Due to the existence of two sets of contractual systems, domestic and foreign, and two sets of normative systems, civil and administrative, the understanding of the contractual obligations and legal liabilities of the parties by the Poverty Alleviation Office, the client unit and the project implementation unit differed greatly. The case-handling authorities and the contractual counterparts in this case did not have a comprehensive and adequate understanding of the content and value of the technical services provided by the Agricultural Research Institute, which led to the parties to the contract not being able to reach a consensus on the use and distribution of the loan and contractual payments issued by the foreign government, and even escalated the civil dispute into a criminal case.
In this regard, Liang Yali team of lawyers will be in the case as well as the defense collected the original content of the contract to sort out, the contract obligations by stage, the main body of the collation, analysis, and ultimately came to the Office of Poverty Alleviation, the customer unit (technical support unit) and the implementation of the project of the three main contractual rights and obligations of the content of the main body, and then combined with the defense to provide evidence to prove that the defendant's unit has already been actively fulfilling the contractual obligations and the ability and willingness to continue to perform the contract. Existence of the ability to continue to fulfill the contract, willingness and possibility, thus proving that this case is not a contract fraud.
Finally, this case involves agricultural science and technology related knowledge, the defense of high professional requirements. This case for the defendant whether to have the ability to perform the contract as well as the contract performance of the proof of agricultural science and technology related professional knowledge. Whether the technical services to provide in place, the parties do not understand the same information asymmetry. For the defense work, to correspond to the technical knowledge to the composition of the factual elements of the judgment and the application of the law on the proof of the difficulty, but also in the limited time to let the trial judge to understand and accept, it is even more difficult.
In this regard, in addition to combing the evidence materials, Liang Yali team of lawyers, also through a number of meetings, listen to the defendant on the facts of the case and the responsibility of their own claims, to the defendant to learn to understand the Institute of Agricultural Research to provide technical services to the practical way and verify the way, and then form a perfect logic, evidence of the defense point of view. On this basis, the defendant actively communicated with the judge of the first trial and provided written materials to convince the judge before and during the trial.
Effectiveness in the second trial: on the basis of professional excellence, we made every effort to safeguard the interests of the parties concerned.
The first trial found that the defendant was convicted of contract fraud and sentenced to 13 years of imprisonment, the result was not satisfactory, but the client and his family did not give up the opportunity to clarify the innocence and appealed, and continued to entrust Liang Yali lawyers to act as a defender.
Liang Yali team of lawyers in the first trial based on the defense work, will be determined as an important entry point for the dispute over the amount of the crime, after all, in the case of contract fraud, the amount of the crime of the defendant's sentencing has a great impact on the defendant, but also on the defendant and his family in the future to maintain the basic life of the important significance. Whether it should be calculated with all the money obtained by the Institute of Agricultural Sciences, whether it should be deducted based on the contract for technical services and technology research and development related costs and expenses, which not only involves the administrative provisions of the norms for the management of foreign government loan projects, but also involves the tax, auditing related professional knowledge.
Liang Yali team of lawyers and the second trial panel and the prosecution actively communicate, and at the same time with the party's family and the staff of the unit actively cooperate with the party in the contract period of the funds advanced and the Agricultural Research Institute for the project expenditure of all the costs for the audit, and issued a special audit report, and further proof of the case that the amount of fraud identified as an error. At the same time, the defense lawyers acted as a bridge between the client, his family, the public prosecutor and the panel, fully conveying the opinions of all parties and making efforts for the client's early return to freedom.
In the end, the second instance panel adopted the important defense views of Liang Yali's team and ruled to revoke the judgment of the first instance and remanded the case to the first instance court for a new trial. So far, the two lawyers fought for their clients to have another chance to recognize right and wrong.
Conclusion: The road to freedom is long, but there is hope in moving forward.
As entrepreneurs and scholars with qualifications in agricultural science and technology and the ideal of spreading advanced agricultural production technology, the parties involved in this case suffered imprisonment due to the conflict of interests and miscommunication between the parties in the process of practicing their ideals, which triggered a civil dispute and turned into a criminal case. This case has both criminal and civil cross, also has criminal cross, the legal facts and legal relationships are very complex, Liang Ya Li team of lawyers with excellent legal expertise and rich experience in the defense, basically restore the truth of the case, for the maintenance of the legitimate rights and interests of private enterprises to provide assistance, for the parties to regain their freedom to do their best. Although the re-trial of the case has not yet been finalized, but for the parties have once again been given the opportunity to clarify the facts, right and wrong. Although the road to freedom is long, the two lawyers and the client and his family believe that hope can only be realized by persevering.
