China

Corporate Compliance; Criminal Charges

Lawyer Zhou has been working as a lawyer since 1991. As an exceptional criminal defence lawyer, he has handled over a thousand types of cases tried by the Supreme People’s Court and District courts in his distinguished career. Due to his professional ability in difficult and complex criminal defences, many cases he represented have achieved good results such as “acquittal”, “nonprosecution”, “withdrawing cases”, etc. Some cases even have significant impacts nationwide, and have been reported and reprinted by CCTV, local TV stations, Law Daily, Beijing Youth Daily as well as other media.

In the process of handling cases, Lawyer Zhou put forward and practiced the idea of “three-dimensional defence”, which means in the time dimension, different from other lawyers, Zhou and his team provide defence services not only in trials but also before and after trials. In the subject dimension, they emphasise and try to persuade all of subjects concerning the criminal procedure, including prosecutors, trials and even judicial committee. In the psychological dimension, they utilise issues related to procedures, evidence, legal application, and criminal policy to comprehensively influence the judges’ discretion, and finally win lawsuits.

Furthermore, with professionalism and dedication, Lawyer Zhou wins the recognition of clients. These clients include executives of state-owned enterprises, government officials, leaders of organisations of a gangland nature as well as CEOs of influential private enterprises, and sometimes involve very serious charges such as murder, organising and leading Mafia-like groups, loan fraud, and embezzling huge amounts of funds.

Some Selected cases:

● Represented for a chairman of large corporations in Shandong Province, who was charged with contract fraud, loan fraud, as well as illegal absorption of public deposits. This case went through four trial stages, with the chairman finally being acquitted. Lawyer Zhou also was awarded one of the top ten classic cases of innocent defence in China in 2019 on account of the case.

● Represented for a chairman of a large private enterprise in Henan Province, who was charged with illegal occupation of arable land, false reporting of registered capital, as well as contract fraud. The case received attention from the highest level leaders and was ultimately acquitted on all three charges after three trial stages.

● Represented for a government official in a series of huge bribery cases involving the Secretary of a Municipal Party Committee of the Communist Party of China in Hebei Province. In this case, the prosecutors suggested a 14-year sentence but defence brought a substantial reduction in the punishment in the first instance to nine years.

● Represented for a leader of accused Mafia-like groups containing 20 members in Shandong Province. The charge was dismissed after defence.

● Represented for a shareholder of an import and export company in Beijing accused of goods and items prohibited by the state for import and export. After intervening in the case, the defendant was released on bail pending trial and was exempted from criminal punishment in the first instance.