China executes securities trader over $9.52m fraud Chinese authorities have executed a securities trader found guilty of embezzlement to the tune of $9.52m. However, the whereabouts of the siphoned-off cash is still unknown, Reuters reports - and presumably it will never now be recovered. Yang Yanming received the death sentence back in 2005 for embezzlement while he was …
I normally love the register for its sarcastic comments and humorous catch-lines. I think that just once though, you have gone too far. I never thought I'd say that about the register.
It is a mans life that has been taken.......... Perhaps its not really a good article for a funny sub-heading.
Sorry you were offended by that, but I find the story appalling and wasn't making light of it with that subhead. I was just having a pop at bankers who aren't punished at all for their misdeeds and are in fact rewarded for it as it makes for a brutal contrast. No one should be executed over any amount of stolen money as far as I'm concerned.
It might be inappropriate to be flippant anywhere near this sort of thing but a) satire is almost always a good thing and b) some days I can't pinpoint with total accuracy where the line is, y'know.
Because we never hear of miscariges of justice ever, it's totally unheard of.
In fact modern DNA is so foolproof that we haven't had to stop the use of low copy DNA because it was turning up false positives. Oh, hang on, yes we have.
Also, there being a lot of people isn't a reason to cull now, is it?
with you on that one. What do you call a pile of fifty bankers at the bottom of the sea..
i wonder if they try to recoup the losses by trading the body parts. It's a well documented process with lesser criminals and their disposal. Do i remember seeing a short item somewhere on the numbers used for transplants, post execution? They were considering execution methods with an eye towards increasing yield.
now that's cold.
...it has to be you see, or the organs deteriorate before they can be plumbed into a member of the ruling elite that classless China doesn't have.
Chemical chance forbid they get the same idea over here in Blighty.
As long term unemployed, I'd be fitted up, convicted, sliced up and distibuted to various private hospitals before you can say Jack Straw... erm... I mean Robinson.
"While murder, drug trafficking and the like attract the penalty, the state will also happily execute other classes of criminals"
Maybe is just me, but I think that the punishment is way inappropriate for the class of crime involved. I understand in the case of murder and the like, but the only thing the guy did was stole money... and from who exactly? Don't even think that is supposed to be as 'example' for others, it seems just an overreaction to me.
The price for his life was $9.52m. The price for the Bhopal victims worked out at around $1000 each, and individually everyone responsible got off scot-free.
Notwithstanding the abhorrence of the death penalty in every situation, white-collar crime is woefully under-punished in general and "hard" cases won't change that.
An end to limited liability, an end to legal person status for corporations, personal legal responsibility subsisting in every financial transaction - that'll stop their farting in church.
...stealing from the bank as opposed to stealing from people.
That aside, I can't help but wonder if the embezzlement was done through routing fractional remainders of every transaction into a separate account so as to fund the construction of a massive, sentient supercomputer?
Does that mean "they were executed"?
According to http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Pair-Executed-By-Firing-Squad-In-China-For-Role-In-Sale-Of-Tainted-Baby-Milk/Article/200911415465344?f=rss (?)
"Geng Jinping and Zhang Yujun were executed with a bullet to the back of the neck.
"Geng, who managed a milk production centre in Hebei Province, was sentenced to death last year for selling hundreds of tons of tainted milk.
"Zhang, a cattle farmer, was given the death penalty for producing the so-called "protein powder" containing Melamine.
"Tia Wenhau, a 66-year-old woman, was given a life sentence at the trial. She was the highest ranking executive charged in the food safety scandal.
"The harsh sentences are an indication of China's determination to crack down hard on those involved in food safety issues."
Cattle farmer executed, manager executed, executive not executed so evidently the word "executive" confusingly means the opposite of "they're the ones who get it in the neck".
Bastards all if they did as accused. I don't accept the death penalty although I'm provisionally open to argument, but I feel less bad about it in some cases.
... focus Bank directors minds if the ultimate sanction were the death penalty.
Personally, I believe that anyone who has the power to destroy or preserve the livelihoods (and indeed lives) of millions of people should also face the greatest sanctions if they are prepared to help themselves to the greatest rewards.
...at least the Chinese are punishing bankers for their misdeeds instead of bailing them out with no strings attached, thus leaving them free to shit all over the economy again.
Somewhere between "put to death" and "golden parachute" there is a happy medium on how to deal with these corrupt bastards who *have* destroyed lives by their greed. I'm thinking we should keep Gitmo open and swap some pinstripe suits for orange jumpsuits.
The 'happy medium' that so many people have asked for isn't quite as simple as they'd like to believe.
Prison is supposed to be a happy medium, but prisons (in this country) became places with TVs, games consoles, whores, mobiles and all the drugs you can get man-loved for.
There is a very simple approach to various crimes. Intent. Deliberate Intent.
You don't accidentally burgle someone's home. You don't accidentally take a gun, walk into a shop, shoot the owner and take his stuff, leaving his family destroyed. You don't accidentally steal over $9.5m. I say more punishments like this for deliberate crimes and less for petty stuff.
If you think prison's so great, why don't you go and commit some crime deliberately to get sent there? What, you don't want to? Maybe that's the point.
Since I find corporal punishment and other types of maltreatment almost as morally repugnant as prison itself, I can't think of an acceptable punishment I would personally hate to be subjected to more.
Strange indeed is your statement regarding, the person ruined a number of people and their families. What is the point in shoving him into a prison? He will get out and do more of the same. I find it nauseatingly hypocritical when people waffle about "a man's life". What about the many people ruined? And it is not an impulsive crime, to amass such vast sums, it must have taken some time. I hope the authorities took the cost of the bullet and the executioner's salary from him. Very likely that his other pals got away though. Wish we had something like this in India.
"No one should be executed over any amount of stolen money as far as I'm concerned."
Coincidence: I heard a lawyer talking today coming out of the court near where I work. He was complaining to a colleague: "I don't understand it, our client gets 5 years for nicking $150, and a corporate banking gets 10 months good behaviour bond for nicking $5,000,000."
Amen, brother!
Personally I think the Chinese are right on the money with this one, so to speak. Also, it's their country, they can do what they want to their crims. Up to a point the death penalty is abhorent; perspective changes when you have 1.2 billion people to deal with.
Good job we don't have a One World Government then, with 6 billion people to deal with they'll no doubt be executing people for having badly manicured nails.
BTW us 'barbaric' Welshies abolished capital punishment 1,064 years ago (you may have noticed the Bible says 'Thou shalt not kill', there's no subsequent clause that says 'unless...'). Try, I know it's difficult but please, try to get with the program, people.
Though I'd prefer to see more of them convicted and made to live in destitution for the rest of their natural lives. Very few get caught and even fewer get convicted as they have the financial resources to play the system. Perhaps if they were made to use public defenders instead of supplying their own legal help?
On moral and ethical grounds, the severity of the punishments meted out to this criminal in China seems to have been matched by the leniency with which misbehaviour has been dealt with in the UK in its banking crisis. In the Chinese case, accountability seems to have been pursued, though we don't know whether it was completely pursued, meaning we don't know whether there were others who failed to supervise matters in a competent manner to help prevent this criminal initially succeeding. The person concerned has certainly been held to account by suffereing consequences of the most severe kind. In the UK case, accountability may have been identified imperfectly, but there have been little or no consequences, and outright incompetence seems to have been ignored or punished by what seems to be an obscene award of retirement money to ease the people out of the way.
One might say that the two cases almost cancel each other out in terms of proper investigation of intent, competence, and accountability leading to consequences. However, in this case, the overall end result is most definitely not a "happy medium"!
It's not 'nauseatingly hypocritical' at all. By all means throw the fucker in jail forever. But taking a life in that way is an overwhelming responsibility that I don't personally believe humanity should take.
But y'know, vengeance and bloodlust have their place in civilised society, I guess.
Kill one, frighten a thousand.
George Soros. "Capitalism without bankruptcy is like religion without hell."
If you reward reckless behaviour (don't care what the long term result is my bonus is in the bag), incompetance (not sure what they do or how but my bonus is in the bag) or outright criminality (their money is in my bag) there is no restraint on behaviour by financial institutions.
In the UK they are also 1st in line if a company goes bankrupt, even if their actions *alone* are the cause of the bankruptcy.
I don't believe in the death penalty givent the extensive miscarriages of justice seen in various legal systems that have it. The US system, where stealing $40bn gets you (possibly) several 100 years time (but it's not like he killed anyone) seems a pretty good idea. Provided you can secure a conviction.
I have to admit the odd banker ending up face down in a field might make a few collegues think twice about planning fast and loose with other poeples money.
...a few weeks ago:
"CHINA MAINTAINS INTERNATIONAL REPUTATION FOR NOT FUCKING ABOUT"
That was in relation to the melamine in milk scandal.
Serious bit:
I've lived in China, and I've seen the folks paraded through the street on their way out to the execution site. It's utterly chilling. However- irrespective of how I personally feel about the death penalty*- it fits the local culture and mentality. It's explicable in a way that the US death penalty isn't.
Not excusing it, just saying, y'know
*not a fan
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