Chinese prosecutors ordered to target web-borne financial crime

Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) has ordered Chinese prosecutors to target web-borne financial fraud, particularly pyramid schemes.

In a circular issued to procuratorates at all levels across the country, the SPP said prosecutors should target "financial crocodiles" who sabotage the order of financial markets and "insiders" who trade their power for money and funnel investors' benefits for their own gains, to serve as "an effective warning and deterrent."

In particular, they should focus on crime involving securities and futures, and duty crime in the financial sector to head off sprawling corruption in the field.

Nevertheless, the SPP said a fine line must be drawn between a misstep in financial reform or innovation and dereliction of duty or malpractice, as well as between financial crime and legit private lending activities, so as to clamp down on financial crime on the one hand and safeguard financial reform and innovation on the other.