Recently, Wang Jianjun, vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, has received widespread attention from the market for his "investor-oriented" statement, and at the subsequent 2024 system work conference held by the China Securities Regulatory Commission, he also emphasized that "the concept of investor-oriented should be highlighted". "Investor-oriented" has become a buzzword in the current market.
Wang Jianjun, vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, also specifically mentioned that "supervision must be comprehensively strengthened in accordance with the law, especially the supervision of listed companies", when proposing to "build an investor-oriented capital market". To this end, Vice Chairman Wang Jianjun stressed that it is necessary to further improve the anti-counterfeiting system and mechanism of the capital market and maintain a high-pressure situation of "zero tolerance". For fraudulent issuance and other illegal acts that seriously harm the interests of investors, we will resolutely crack down on them and let them "go bankrupt and sit in prison". The intermediaries involved in the fraud will be held accountable, so that they dare not do it again. It is precisely based on Wang Jianjun's statement that the fraudulent issuer's statement of "bankrupting and sitting in prison" has attracted the attention and heated discussion of the market, together with the "investor-oriented".
Vice Chairman Wang Jianjun's remark that fraudulent issuers should "go bankrupt and sit in prison" actually represents the voice of the majority of investors. However, how to let fraudulent issuers and those who seriously damage the interests of investors "go bankrupt and sit in prison" is a question that the A** field must face and must come up with.
Although for a market with strict laws, it is not difficult to do this. For example, the U.S. market's handling of the Enron incident really made those who seriously damaged the interests of investors "bankrupt and sit in prison", among them, Enron CEO Jeffrey Skiring was sentenced to 24 years in prison and fined $45 million; The company's founder, Kenneth Ley, was fined $12 million despite his criminal charges dropped for his death during the proceedings; Enron's investors received a whopping $71 through a class action lawsuitUS$400 million settlement damages; The three major investment banks, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, paid $2 billion, $2.2 billion and $69 million in fines to Enron investors, respectively.
However, for the A** market, there is no such precedent for allowing fraudulent issuers and those who seriously damage the interests of investors to "go bankrupt and sit in prison". In the fraudulent issuance case, the heaviest sentence was He Xuekui, the former chairman of Greenland, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined 600,000 yuan, which is far from the requirement of "bankrupting the family and sitting in prison". In fact, in some cases of fraudulent issuance, the parties concerned are still the beneficiaries of the fraudulent issuance. A few years in prison can make a profit of hundreds of millions or more, which is something that most people are willing to do, even if it is worth going to prison for others. Therefore, for the A** market, how to let fraudulent issuers and those who seriously damage the interests of investors "go bankrupt and sit in prison" is a practical problem that needs to be faced and solved. So, how do you solve this problem? In my opinion, the key is to solve the problems in these three aspects.
First of all, it is necessary to improve the legislation, and to ensure from the legislative level that fraudulent issuers and those who seriously harm the interests of investors can "go bankrupt and sit in prison". At this level, the * Law can basically make the parties "bankrupt" on the issue of fraudulent issuance, for example, imposing a fine of not less than 10% but not more than one time of the amount of illegally raised funds on the issuer; Where the controlling shareholder or actual controller of an issuer organizes or instigates the illegal acts described in the preceding paragraph, the unlawful gains shall be confiscated and a fine of not less than 10% but not more than 1 time of the unlawful gains shall be imposed. If the maximum penalty is implemented, it is enough to achieve the effect of "bankruptcy".
However, for some illegal and criminal acts, the punishment of the "* Law" is still not enough. In case of illegal information disclosure, the "* Law" stipulates that if there are false records, misleading statements or material omissions in the report submitted or disclosed information submitted by the information disclosure obligor, it shall be ordered to make corrections, given a warning, and imposed a fine of not less than 1 million yuan but not more than 10 million yuan. A maximum fine of less than 10 million yuan is obviously not enough to bankrupt the illegal information discloser, not to mention that the maximum penalty for the main responsible person is still less than 5 million yuan.
And this problem of the ** Law also exists in the Criminal Code. If the conviction for the crime of fraudulent issuance is especially huge, the consequences are particularly serious, or there are other especially serious circumstances, the sentence is to be five or more years imprisonment and a concurrent fine. The five-year starting point here is obviously too low, at least 10 years or more, and the sentence for the main offender should be more than 20 years.
Second, there is the issue of strict law enforcement. After all, legislation leaves a lot of "free play" for law enforcers. For example, for many violations of laws and regulations, the penalty given by the "* Law" is "a fine of more than one time and less than ten times". Here, the enforcement of a double penalty is completely different from a tenfold penalty. Punishment according to the top level is severe punishment, and punishment according to the low point may be connivance of violations of laws and regulations. Therefore, in order to ensure that fraudulent issuers and those who seriously harm the interests of investors are "bankrupt and in prison", it is necessary to strictly enforce the law and severely punish illegal and criminal acts in accordance with the law.
Third, it is necessary to effectively compensate investors. Compensating investors is not only to protect the interests of investors, but also to impose heavy penalties on fraudulent issuers and those who seriously damage the interests of investors. After all, in fraudulent issuance cases and some major cases that seriously damage the interests of investors, the amount of compensation to investors is usually a huge amount, ranging from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars. The implementation of compensation to investors is sufficient to bankrupt fraudulent issuers and those who seriously harm the interests of investors. For example, the Enron case in the United States has paid investors as much as 71$400 million, which is enough to bankrupt some people who seriously hurt the interests of investors.