After being under police control for 2 years 10 month1day, on the afternoon of June 5438+February, 2009, Wu Ying, 28, heard the first-instance judgment of the death penalty in the trial court of Jinhua Intermediate People's Court, Zhejiang Province.
To the surprise of many people, Wu Ying remained as cool as a cucumber during the nearly one-hour reading of the verdict. Even after hearing the final result that "the defendant Wu Ying committed fund-raising fraud and was sentenced to death", Wu Ying still could not see a strange expression on her face. As the eldest daughter of the family, she asked her family to "take care of herself" when she was taken away from the court. But just out of the court, Wu Ying shed tears.
For Wu Ying, this is a belated verdict, and the result is almost cruel. Although the lawyer defended her innocence, Wu Ying could not predict whether her fate would improve before the second and final judgments were announced.
Since the establishment of Zhejiang Dongyang Bense Group, our reporter has been tracking and reporting the development and decline of Bense Group, witnessing the complicated three-year life track of Wu Ying.
Qibu beauty industry
Like most young people in Dongyang, Wu Ying's father, Wu Yongzheng, went to Yumen, Gansu as a contractor (1979). Wu Ying was taken to Gansu by his parents shortly after his birth. Wu Ying's childhood, except for the occasional Spring Festival home to accompany his parents, was spent in the northwest.
Wu Yongzheng wanted a son, and as a result, she gave birth to four daughters in a row. At the age of seven, Wu Ying was sent back to Dongyang to study in Tangxia Village Primary School. Wu Yongzheng said that among the four daughters, Wu Ying is the best student, and she is a "three good" student in almost every semester of primary school. However, after entering junior high school in Beijiang Town, Wu Ying's grades began to decline. 1995 After graduating in July, Wu Ying didn't want to study at all. Wu Yongzheng was busy in Gansu for eight years, and didn't have much energy to take care of Wu Ying's affairs, so she arranged for her to learn beauty from her cousin.
In Dongyang, Wu Ying's aunt was the first to do beauty business. After studying in this beauty shop called "Wu Xiaozhen Clinic" for more than a year, Wu Ying went to Cixi, Ningbo, and opened a beauty shop in partnership with others. At this time, Wu was 15 years old.
During her stay in Cixi, young Wu Ying made many friends. A few years later, Yu and others from Ningbo became the first people to lend money to Wu Ying.
Wu Ying stayed in Cixi for about half a year, then returned to Dongyang and told his father that he wanted to continue his studies. Wu Yongzheng looked for people everywhere, and finally arranged for Wu Ying to attend a two-year technical school in Dongyang, even with an account. But to Wu Yongzheng's disappointment, after studying 1 year and a half, Wu Ying had the idea of doing business again and dropped out of school. Wu Yongzheng only arranged for Wu Ying to go back to her aunt's house to study beauty. He believes that only by learning a trade can Wu Can live a good life in the future.
In 2000, Wu Ying, who was still studying beauty in Wu Xiaozhen, met Zhou Hongbo, a native of Dongyang. The following year, they got engaged. At this time, Wuying has accumulated many tourists. With Zhou Hongbo as the main investor and Wu Ying as the boss, they opened a "life-long beauty salon" in Cross Street, Dongyang.
In June 2002, Wu Ying and Zhou Hongbo registered their marriage. In August 2003, Wu Ying gave up the original beauty salon and opened a new "noble beauty salon" in West Street where Zhou Hongbo lives. This business is becoming more and more popular. According to local sources, female civil servants in some government agencies in Dongyang have become long-term customers of Wu Ying. In the beauty shop, Wu Ying accumulated a lot of contacts and found the first bucket of gold in life.
In order to buy goods from Guangzhou and other places, Wu Ying began to travel everywhere, and even her husband Zhou Hongbo didn't know where she had gone. After experiencing the initial "aristocratic beauty", Zhou Hongbo turned to rent a booth in the downtown Haoleduo supermarket and started a fruit business. Since then, Wu Ying has taken care of the beauty shop alone.
In March 2005, Wu Ying took over the Sheraton Club from others and became the new owner of the club. After the transformation, Sheraton became one of the best KTV in Dongyang at that time. A month later, Wu Ying opened the Qianzutang Hairdressing Leisure House in Dongyang. Since then, she has also opened a branch of Qianzutang in Yiwu. After Wu Ying was detained, Yiwu Qianzutang, as the only industry that has not been sealed up, continued to operate at the insistence of Wu Ying's father until this year.
In February 2006, Wu Ying opened Xinyi Investment Guarantee Co., Ltd. in his mother's hometown of Jingmen, Hubei, with a registered capital of 6,543,800,000 yuan. The following month, Wu Ying registered another Xinyi Investment Guarantee Co., Ltd. in Zhuji, Zhejiang, and began to intervene in private lending, copper futures and other transactions.
Bense myth
With a net worth of millions at the age of 25, Wu Ying is undoubtedly the best among his peers. However, in hindsight, everything she did before seemed to be just a warm-up for the formation of a natural color group.
Since April 2006, Bense Group has sprung up in Dongyang: Bense business, Bense washing industry, Bense advertising, Bense hotel, Bense computer network, Bense decoration materials, Bense wedding, Bense logistics ... Bense companies have registered one after another. On August 14 of that year alone, Wu Ying registered three companies in one breath. It was not until June 10 that the Japanese color holding group (registered capital 1 100 million yuan) was established that the natural map of Wu Ying was established.
First of all, the local people paid attention to free car washing (but the original logo must be affixed to the license plate) and free laundry service (the daily laundry limit is 100, and each person is limited to 2 pieces), followed by three consecutive fines: 800,000 yuan for Xizhai Primary School in Dongyang, 500,000 yuan for poor students in Pan 'an, and 5 million yuan for Guang Cai enterprises in Dongyang.
Wu Ying's biggest handwriting is real estate investment. In just a few months, she invested nearly 65.438+0.6 billion yuan, including 22 million yuan in Dongyang Boda Real Estate, 30 million yuan in Tongjiang Garden, 50 million yuan in Wang Ning Apartment, 6.5438+0.4 million yuan in Jingmen, Hubei and 3 million yuan in Zhuji, Zhejiang. Most of the properties bought by Wu Ying are shops along the street. In the past three years, the value of these properties has greatly increased, but for Wu Ying in prison, these increases have not helped.
After the establishment of Bense Group, Wu Ying has a special liking for hotel management. After the natural color concept hotel, natural color boutique hotel and natural color holiday hotel were completed in one go (some of them were sealed up when they were still being renovated), Wu Ying is also preparing to replicate this concept throughout the country and open the first chain store in Yiwu.
At the end of 2006 10, Wu Ying and Bense Group became famous all over the country because of the continuous reports from many media in Hangzhou and Shanghai. The top management of Bense Group even claimed that Bense invested more than 350 million yuan in fixed assets in real estate purchase and decoration, but none of them were bank loans, all of them were self-owned funds.
On June, 2006 1 65438+1October/KLOC-0, Wu Ying accepted an exclusive interview with our reporter and talked for more than an hour. Wu Ying attributed hundreds of millions of "own funds" to three channels: futures, real estate speculation and beauty industry.
In fact, Wu Ying's capital chain has been tightened at this time. At the end of February, our reporter interviewed Wu again. She has just left the house arrest of several creditors in Yiwu and returned to Dongyang. The shortage of funds of Bense Group can be seen from this: First, many private lending institutions such as Dongyang and Yiwu frequently urged Wu Ying to pay off debts, then the fake draft of 49 million yuan of Bense Group was confiscated, and the glory business of 5 million yuan was recovered by Bense. On June 24th, 2007, Wu Ying was forced to hold a small press conference in Hangzhou. Although some of her statements can't be justified, Wu Ying remains optimistic and happily takes photos with media reporters including our reporter.
Wu Ying at this time, may not expect that he is about to face jail. Two weeks later, on the evening of February 7th, 2007 10, Wu Ying, who was collecting funds in Beijing, was criminally detained by Dongyang Public Security Bureau on suspicion of illegally absorbing public deposits. 10 in the afternoon, Bense Group was also closed down.
From April 2006 to February 2007, the myth of Bense Group only existed for a short 10 month.
A huge private lending network
Before Wu Ying was detained, almost no one, including the media, knew where the hundreds of millions of funds invested by Bense Group in Dongyang came from.
It was not until the relevant case was announced that the context of capital exchange in Wu Ying became clear: almost all the funds came from private usury. Known bank loans are only short-term loans of ICBC [4. 17 0.72%] dongyang branch15.5 million yuan.
The judgment of Jinhua Intermediate People's Court on Wu Ying case confirmed that as early as April 2006, before the establishment of Bense Company, Wu Ying raised funds from Yu, Xia Yaoqin and others at the daily interest rates of 30%, 60% and 80% per 10,000 yuan140,000 yuan. Most of these people are friends Wu Ying met in Cixi, Ningbo, or Yang Jun, a Yiwu native born in 1979. Then he got to know Yang and borrowed the first batch of funds of 6 million yuan.
Yang Jun and Luo Huamei know each other. Lin Weiping, the former squadron leader of Yiwu Cultural Bureau, is Luo Huamei's cousin, and Wu Ying knows Lin Weiping.
On March 30th, 2006, Wu Ying borrowed the first batch of 5 million yuan from Lin Weiping for investing in the shops in Guangzhou Baima Clothing City. Since then, hundreds or even tens of millions of yuan have been credited every few days. On October 5th, 2007, Wu Ying borrowed 470 million yuan from Lin Weiping in just nine months, and the last loan of 2 million yuan was recorded.
After Yang's introduction, Wu Ying got to know Yang again and invested in copper futures with him. In the case of a loss of 47.4 million yuan in futures investment, Wu Ying still "kept his promise" and returned 33 million yuan of investment funds from Yang et al., "turned over profits"140,000 yuan.
Later, Wu Ying was introduced by Yang and others, and got to know Yang Zhiang, a lawyer, and borrowed more than 30 million yuan from Yang Zhiang.
The court found that from May 2005 to February 2007, Wu Ying illegally raised RMB 770 million from, Yang, Yang et al. 1 person in the name of investment, loan and capital turnover, and actually raised funds to defraud RMB.
Wu Ying can continue to borrow huge sums of money because he pays high interest and can pay interest on time in the early days.
At the court hearing on April 16, 2008, Wu Ying admitted that the annual rate of return of the funds she borrowed from Lin Weiping and others was at least 50%, and some of them reached 100%. When there is a problem in the later capital chain, there is even a "three-month return period"-that is, the interest for three months reaches 100%. Even if interest is not calculated, the annual interest rate is above 400%.
In fact, by the end of 2006 10, when Wu Ying began to pay attention to the media, the capital chain of Bense Group was close to breaking. At the end of 65438+February, a "kidnapping case" occurred, which made matters worse.
According to Wu Ying's report to the public security organ, from June 5438 to February 2/kloc-0 to 28, 2008, he was placed under house arrest by Yang Zhiang and Yang, members of Yang Jiacheng, Yiwu, due to a debt dispute. Wu Ying and his family called it "kidnapping".
"During the kidnapping, I went to Hangzhou, Wenzhou, Maanshan, Anhui and Zhenjiang, Jiangsu, searched and molested me, threatened to kill me and throw me into the river, and forced me to sign more than 30 blank documents, looting tens of thousands of yuan in cash, 3.3 million cash checks and several bank cards (forced to tell the password). On February 27th, 65438, they sent someone to Dongyang to take away my jewels worth hundreds of millions. On the same day, they took away all the documents of our company 14 property, the complete set of documents of 29 cars and related financial vouchers ... "Wu Ying said.
After Wu Ying reported the case, the local police never filed a case. Two days later, Bense Group received an envelope containing two bullets.
Sentencing dispute
According to Wu Ying's family, Wu Ying thought about being kidnapped by his creditors, but never thought about being detained by the police. On February 9, two days after Wu Ying was detained, Wu Ying's family reported the case to the police in Beijing and Dongyang.
The latest news obtained by Time Weekly reporter shows that on February 9, 2007, Wu Ying's father Wu Yongzheng, her husband Zhou Hongbo and Jiang Xinxing, executive vice president of Bense Group, met with creditors Lin Weiping, Luo Huamei and Xu Yulan at Bense Concept Hotel to discuss countermeasures. Finally, the two sides reached an understanding that before Wu Ying appeared, Bense Group was authorized to be managed by Lin Weiping. Lin Weiping and others also offered to borrow money to buy shares, but the shares fell through because the proportion of shares was not settled.
Lin Weiping is a famous money broker in Yiwu. One person lent Wu Ying 470 million yuan, more than half of the money borrowed by Wu Ying. At the time of the crime, Wu Yingshang owed Lin Weiping 320 million yuan. The court found that Wu Ying's final "fund-raising fraud" amounted to only 380 million yuan.
To the surprise of the participants, Lin Weiping and Luo Huamei were detained by Dongyang police as soon as they left the hotel after the meeting. The next day, Bense Group was seized, and Yiwu brokers Yang and Yang Zhiang were detained. Since then, Xu Yulan and Yang have also been criminally detained. On March 16, Wu Ying and Lin Weiping were arrested at the same time. Wu Ying's case was finally solved.
On October 22nd, 65438/KLOC-0 this year, Dongyang People's Court sentenced seven defendants, including Lin Weiping, who was involved in the Wu Ying case. All seven defendants were convicted and punished for the crime of illegally absorbing public deposits, with prison terms ranging from 18 months to 6 years. Among them, Lin Weiping illegally absorbed 865 1 0.5 million yuan from 7 1 person and1unit. Besides Wu Ying, Yiwu has other online outlets, and the total loan amount even exceeds that of Wu Ying. However, he was only sentenced to six years in prison.
Different from the relatively calm judgments of Lin Weiping and others, the trial of Wu Ying's case is quite tortuous.
Before the trial of Wu Ying's case on April 6, 2008, Dongyang People's Procuratorate and Jinhua People's Procuratorate drafted the indictment in February and 10 respectively.
In the first indictment, Wu Ying was charged with the crime of contract fraud and the crime of illegally absorbing public deposits, and the subjects of these two charges were Bense Group, and Wu Ying, as the legal representative of Bense Group, was listed as the defendant. In the second indictment, the charges and subjects changed. On charges of fund-raising fraud, Wu Ying was listed as the defendant in his personal capacity.
In the prosecution stage of Dongyang City Procuratorate, Wu Ying and Lin Weiping were prosecuted together. However, due to the change of sentencing specifications, Wu Ying became independent, and the place of first instance was changed from Dongyang People's Court to Jinhua Intermediate People's Court, and the prosecutor was also changed from Dongyang Procuratorate to Jinhua Procuratorate.
"Illegal absorption of public deposits and fund-raising fraud are very different in criminal law. The former has a maximum sentence of 10 year, and the latter has a maximum death penalty. " At the first trial in April this year, Wu Ying's defense lawyers Yang Zhaodong and Zhang Yanfeng pleaded not guilty to Wu Ying. The prosecution and the defense fought fiercely around three focuses: whether Wu Ying subjectively possessed the intention of illegally occupying other people's property, whether this case was a unit crime or a natural person crime, and whether Wu Ying's crime constituted the crime of fund-raising fraud.
"As far as we know, the money borrowed by Wu Ying is only a private lending behavior between friends, and there is no fraudulent means, and there is no idea of illegal possession. All of it is used for the company's operation, and it is promised to be returned. Therefore, we believe that Wu Ying's behavior does not constitute a crime of fund-raising fraud and can only be regarded as a civil dispute. " Yang Zhaodong said.
However, when the verdict was pronounced in the first instance, the defense lawyers' defense of the above three aspects was not adopted by the court.
After Wu Ying became famous, kidnapped and detained, Wu Ying and his family hired three lawyers. The Beijing Kyoto Law Firm where Yang Zhaodong and Zhang Yanfeng are located is quite famous in the industry. Yang Zhaodong is currently the attorney of Huang Guangyu. This time, Yang Zhaodong did not appear in court because of other arrangements.
But the most unfavorable thing for Wu Ying is the verdict of Du Yimin, the protagonist of Zhejiang Lishui fund-raising case. Du Yimin, who was also convicted of "fund-raising fraud", was finally executed after review by the Supreme Court.
The reporter of Time Weekly noticed that the court verdict of Wu Ying's case was 65438+February 2009 18, but the verdict date was 65438+20091October 29. This means that as early as 40 days before sentencing, Wu Ying's death sentence has been confirmed.
Private lending dilemma
After Wu Ying was sentenced to death in the first instance, people talked about whether Wu Ying should die, even in Jinhua Intermediate People's Court, there were different voices. Especially on the Internet, people who sympathize with Wu Ying and think that he died unjustly occupy a one-sided position.
Ye Tan, a well-known financial commentator, believes that the fierce dispute over whether Wu Ying should be executed is actually a long-term dispute over whether private lending is legal and reasonable.
In Zhejiang, where private capital is abundant, private lending has been prevalent, especially in Wenzhou and Jinhua, due to the general financing difficulties of small and medium-sized enterprises and the natural profit-seeking nature of private capital.
According to public information, in 2008, there were nearly 200 cases of illegally absorbing public deposits and more than 40 cases of fund-raising fraud in Zhejiang Province, a sharp increase year-on-year. Among them, illegal absorption of public deposits 1 100 million yuan or more cases 17 cases, illegal fund-raising crimes broke out in a concentrated manner, involving nearly 10 billion yuan. Private lending and illegal fund-raising are usually difficult to define, and there is no clear distinction between crime and non-crime
On February 2, 2008, 65438, the Higher People's Court of Zhejiang Province, the Procuratorate and the Public Security Department jointly issued the minutes of the meeting with the theme of "Several Issues Concerning the Application of Laws in Handling Criminal Cases of Fund Raising at Present".
The minutes of the meeting clearly pointed out that the situation of "raising funds from relatively fixed personnel for production and operation needs by promising to repay the principal and interest, mainly for legal production and operation activities" should be treated as a private lending dispute, and "it should not be considered as the crime of illegally absorbing public deposits or the crime of fund-raising fraud".
Wu Xiaobo, a famous financial writer, believes that the emergence of many figures such as Du Yimin and Wu Ying is an institutional tragedy in the context of the unreasonable structure of the existing financial system. It is very likely that in a few years, with the market-oriented reform of China's financial system, the actions of Du Yimin and Wu Ying should be in line with commercial laws and legal.
In the article "Illegal Wu Ying and" Legal "Corruption" published on February 22nd, 65438, Wu Xiaobo came to a conclusion: a basic feature of contemporary China economy is that all important reforms are promoted from bottom to top, so it has illegal natural characteristics; Many high-level corruption is carried out from top to bottom, so it is often legal in appearance.
Wu Ying's crime and punishment, death and immortality are obviously not just Wu Ying's business.