Recently, the “Spotlight on the Legal World” column of People’s Rule of Law, a leading domestic legal media outlet, published an exclusive interview titled “How Criminal Defense Lawyers ‘Break Down Barriers’: Using Legal and Business Thinking to Bridge the Gap Between Facts and the Law” . The article takes an in-depth look at the professional career, case-handling philosophy, and professional insights of Peng Jiyue, Senior Partner at Beijing King&Capital Law Firm, systematically presenting the integrated legal-business defense approach and professional methods he has developed in handling major official misconduct cases, financial crimes, and corporate-related criminal cases.
Peng Jiyue, Senior Partner at Beijing King&Capital Law Firm
With dual degrees in law and management, ten years of experience as a senior executive at a foreign enterprise, and multiple professional roles—including as a specially appointed lawyer in the Supreme People’s Procuratorate’s Expert Consultation Pool for Prosecution and Complaints, a legal aid attorney for death penalty review at the Ministry of Justice, and a researcher at the Advanced Institute of Criminal Defense at Northwest University of Political Science and Law—Peng Jiyue, Senior Partner at King&Capital Law Firm, has forged a path in criminal defense characterized by a distinct integration of legal and business expertise.
Since joining King&Capital Law Firm in 2018, he has long specialized in major official misconduct cases, financial crimes, and online crimes involving large numbers of victims, gradually developing a case-handling system characterized by “early intervention, meticulous screening, precise defense, and appropriate alignment of rights and responsibilities.” In his view, high-quality criminal defense cannot be limited to a mere accumulation of legal arguments; rather, it must integrate the three dimensions of law, business, and management to reconstruct the facts and delineate rights and responsibilities amid vast case files and complex transaction structures.
From Corporate Management to Criminal Defense
A Dual Legal and Business Background Shapes Professional Strengths
After earning dual degrees in law and management, Peng Jiyue did not immediately join a law firm but instead served as an executive at a multinational corporation for ten years, where he was deeply involved in corporate decision-making, organizational management, investment and financing, and financial accounting. This experience familiarized him with the operational logic of commercial transactions, cash flows, and departmental responsibilities, laying a crucial foundation for his future handling of corporate and financial criminal cases.
In the early stages of his transition to the legal profession, he gained extensive exposure to civil, commercial, and non-litigation matters. After a period of practice and exploration, he ultimately chose criminal defense as his primary practice area. The comprehensive demands of major and complex criminal cases—requiring expertise in law, business, and management—align closely with his professional background and corporate management experience.
Attorney Peng Jiyue delivering closing remarks at the National Young Lawyers Training Camp
Handling cases involving corporate, financial, and official misconduct crimes requires not only scrutinizing legal elements but also understanding business processes, decision-making chains, the flow of funds, and the division of labor among personnel. Attributing liability solely based on job titles, signatures, or surface-level accounting records can easily lead to a misrepresentation of a company’s actual operations. His background in management and business operations enables Peng Jiyue to quickly grasp organizational structures and transactional logic, which he then combines with the elements of criminal offenses and evidentiary standards to pinpoint the focal points of the dispute.
When facing cases involving numerous parties and complex facts, he habitually asks four questions: How were business operations carried out? How were decisions formed? Why did funds flow as they did? And to whom did the benefits accrue? The core points of contention in many cases are precisely hidden within these details of business management. Reconstructing the complete operational facts before making a legal assessment has become his fundamental approach to handling commercial criminal cases.
In-Depth Analysis of Major Financial and Official Duty Crimes
Achieving a Balanced Alignment of Rights and Responsibilities Through Meticulous Defense
Peng Jiyue has long handled cases involving the intersection of financial and official duty crimes. Such cases typically involve massive scales, numerous parties, and complex transaction structures. The determination of facts is easily influenced by positions held, monetary amounts, and written documentation, making it all the more necessary to meticulously dissect conduct and liability by considering corporate governance, financial regulations, and the flow of funds.
One major financial duty-related crime case he handled—involving the former president of a bank—encompassed multiple charges, including corporate bribery, illegal loan issuance, and individual bribery, and touched upon complex issues such as corruption in financial regulation, financing of affiliated enterprises, failures in internal bank governance, equity-related bribery, and accountability for non-compliant lending.
Based on the defendant’s voluntary plea of guilty and acceptance of punishment, Peng Jiyue and his team did not limit their defense to general mitigating circumstances. Instead, they examined each element—including the nature of the bribery benefits, the defendant’s role in the joint criminal activity, loan approval responsibilities, and sentencing balance—by thoroughly reviewing the facts and evidence of the entire case in light of financial industry regulations and corporate governance principles.
Regarding the corporate bribery charges, the prosecution alleged that the total amount of bribes exceeded 550 million yuan, of which approximately 12.68 million yuan was in cash—accounting for only 2.3% of the total alleged amount—with the vast majority consisting of equity-based benefits. The defense team therefore distinguished between cash bribes and equity-based bribes, focusing on whether the relevant equity interests had undergone dividend distributions, transfers, and changes in ownership, and whether they had come under the actual control of the recipients. The team argued that since some equity interests had not yet been fully realized, there was room to characterize the acts as attempted crimes, and that their nominal value should not be directly equated with the amount of a completed crime.
Attorney Peng Jiyue conducting training at the King&Capital Criminal Defense Practical Training Seminar
Regarding liability for joint criminal conduct, the team insisted on defining criminal responsibility based on actual actions and specific roles. Although the defendant had served as the bank’s president, he was not the initiator, planner, or final decision-maker behind the relevant bribery scheme. In certain instances of equity-based bribery, his role was primarily limited to conveying information, coordinating business operations, and implementing procedures. Therefore, his liability should be assessed based on his actual level of participation, avoiding the direct equating of senior management positions with primary responsibility.
Regarding the charges of illegal loan issuance, the team systematically reviewed the processes involved—including the identification of borrowers, business reporting, risk assessment, and final approval—to distinguish between the defendant’s nominal position and his actual authority. At the same time, taking into account the unique context in which the bank had long been under the tight control of affiliated capital and where internal governance and risk control mechanisms had failed, the team argued that the relevant violations exhibited systemic and structural characteristics, and that individual responsibility could not be assessed in isolation from the enterprise’s overall decision-making environment.
Regarding sentencing, the team consolidated mitigating factors such as voluntary surrender, admission of guilt and acceptance of punishment, cooperation with the investigation, and the proactive disclosure of leads regarding others’ major official misconduct, and, in conjunction with written opinions issued by relevant authorities, argued for significant meritorious service. At the same time, by comparing the criminal facts, roles, and mitigating circumstances of co-defendants, the team advocated for sentencing that reflected substantive differences.
Attorney Peng Jiyue providing defense services for his client in court
Rather than treating each charge in isolation, Peng Jiyue examined them within the same context of capital control and bank governance. Through a layer-by-layer analysis of “facts—conduct—liability—punishment,” he prevented the same facts from being evaluated repeatedly and avoided the overbroad assignment of liability resulting from the massive amounts involved and the accumulation of charges.
The People’s Court ultimately took into comprehensive consideration the facts of the case, the evidence, and the defense arguments, and granted the defendant leniency in accordance with the law, ensuring that the sentence was reasonably commensurate with his actual culpability. This case further demonstrates that defense in major financial white-collar crime cases requires looking beyond the superficial aspects of monetary amounts and job titles to focus on specific conduct, actual roles, and evidentiary standards.
Case Handling, Research, and Think Tank Consulting
Three-Dimensional Integration Empowers Professional Growth
Case practice, academic research, and expert consultation are seamlessly integrated within Peng Jiyue’s professional framework.
Frontline cases serve as the wellspring of professional insight. Issues such as distinguishing between corporate and individual crimes, or defining the difference between investment returns and bribery proceeds, often involve complex organizational relationships and transactional contexts when applied to real cases, requiring cross-verification through witness testimony, documentary evidence, financial transaction records, and electronic data.
Academic research, in turn, distills experience from individual cases into reusable methodologies. After a case is concluded, Peng Jiyue reviews the points of contention, defense strategies, and the extent to which his arguments were adopted, analyzing common challenges in the application of the law. The book *The Power of Criminal Defense* is a systematic compilation of his years of case-handling insights and practical observations.
Attorney Peng Jiyue delivering a lecture in the course “How to Conduct Court Debates”
His participation in expert consultations for the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and legal aid work for death penalty review cases has further provided him with a holistic perspective on judicial procedures. High-quality defense arguments must not only be logically consistent and supported by sufficient evidence but also be formulated in a standardized manner that can be incorporated into judicial documents, addressing the review priorities of the prosecuting authorities while upholding the defense’s position.
Case work raises questions, research develops methodologies, and expert consultations broaden judicial perspectives—these three elements reinforce one another and continuously inform defense strategies for subsequent cases.
Building a Four-Dimensional Case Handling System
Upholding the Bottom Line of Criminal Defense Through Rational Restraint
Criminal defense often involves complex case circumstances, public pressure, and procedural obstacles. Peng Jiyue has consistently adhered to facts and the law as his foundation, independently reviewing evidence and making independent judgments. He does not promise clients specific case outcomes but emphasizes a thorough review of case files, ample client meetings, meticulous verification, and timely communication, exhausting all legal avenues to articulate favorable arguments.
He summarizes his core defense philosophy as follows: having the courage to raise reasonable questions regarding facts and the law, while being even more adept at providing practical solutions. A strong defense should be rational, restrained, precise, and constructive.
Through years of practice, he has gradually established a four-dimensional case handling system characterized by “early intervention, meticulous screening, precise defense, and appropriate alignment of rights and responsibilities.”
Early intervention emphasizes timely involvement at the outset of the investigation, before evidence and case-related assets have been fully secured, to help clients understand their legal rights, promptly gather favorable materials, and clarify the core issues of the case as early as possible.
Meticulous scrutiny requires, in cases involving numerous individuals and complex facts, breaking down each factual element for verification, cross-checking funds item by item, and verifying each piece of testimony, without allowing one’s judgment to be swayed by the generalizations in the indictment.
Precise Defense focuses on identifying key points that can influence conviction and sentencing, concentrating limited trial and communication resources on the fundamental contradictions of the case.
Alignment of Rights and Responsibilities emphasizes distinguishing between nominal positions and actual duties performed, ensuring that criminal liability corresponds to an individual’s subjective understanding, degree of involvement, and role in the conduct.
Attorney Peng Jiyue participates in a case seminar at King&Capital Law Firm
These four methods are interlinked: early intervention creates the conditions for fact-checking; meticulous analysis identifies breakthroughs in the case; precise defense focuses on addressing core disputes; and the alignment of authority and responsibility ensures an objective and fair allocation of liability. This system holds significant practical value in organized crime and corporate cases involving large numbers of participants, substantial sums of money, and complex facts.
A Message to Young Criminal Defense Attorneys
Building a Solid Professional Foundation Through Practical Experience
Drawing on his own experience and observations of the industry, Peng Jiyue believes that young criminal defense attorneys should first and foremost strengthen their ability to handle evidence and facts. Familiarity with legal provisions is merely the foundation; when faced with dozens or even hundreds of case files, the ability to construct a factual framework and identify contradictions in the evidence is the fundamental skill of criminal defense.
Proper written communication is equally important. After identifying issues, they must present them in a concise, accurate, and logically coherent manner so that case handlers can quickly identify the factual basis, contradictions in the evidence, and legal conclusions. The core of communication is not about personal relationships, but rather accurately grasping the key concerns of clients, investigators, prosecutors, and judges, and addressing disputes with facts and evidence.
Attorney Peng Jiyue delivering a public interest lecture on the rule of law as part of the King&Capital “Protecting the Young” Initiative
When handling financial, official misconduct, and corporate-related cases, lawyers must proactively expand their knowledge of finance, taxation, corporate governance, and electronic data, and develop the ability to independently understand commercial conduct. No matter how complex a commercial case may be, it ultimately boils down to the elements of a crime and the standard of proof; industry knowledge helps lawyers interpret the facts, while a solid foundation in criminal law, criminal procedure law, and evidence law determines whether an effective defense can be mounted.
Peng Jiyue places particular emphasis on cross-verification. Statements, documentary evidence, bank statements, and electronic records should be cross-referenced; the breakthrough in a case is often hidden in a temporal inconsistency or an unexplained flow of funds.
Real cases are also the best research material. After concluding each case, one should review the challenges encountered, effective methods employed, and the extent to which arguments were adopted. Through consistent practice over the long term, scattered experiences can gradually be transformed into systematic professional competence, forming a professional advantage that is difficult to replicate.
Breaking Down Barriers with Legal and Business Acumen, Upholding Integrity Through Expertise
This exclusive interview with People’s Rule of Law Network not only represents an authoritative media outlet’s recognition of Attorney Peng Jiyue’s professional capabilities but also reflects the achievements of King&Capital Law Firm in advancing the specialization of criminal defense. Attorney Peng Jiyue uses legal and business acumen to penetrate the surface of complex cases, clarifies the boundaries of rights and responsibilities through precise defense, and safeguards fairness and justice at the intersection of fact and law.
