Practical Dilemmas and Judicial Responses on the Offence of Concealing or Disguising the Proceeds of Crime Related to “Telephone and Bank Cards” Case

With the high incidence of telecommunication fraud crimes, the number of the cases involving the offence of concealing or disguising the proceeds of crime related to “telephone and bank cards” is increasing. However, when handling such cases, in judicial practice, there is confusion of funds between criminal proceeds and legal income (mainly including confusion of multiple funds flowing in at the same time, confusion of inflow of illicit money and original card deposits, and confusion of funds caused by money laundering through financial loan platform), which affects objective conviction, diversification of criminal means (mainly including the type of handling loans, helping network streamers to avoid tax, and online shopping such as part-time purchasing gold), which makes it difficult to prove the perpetrator’s subjective knowledge, and there is controversy over whether the perpetrator needs to bear liability for the economic losses of the victim of the predicate crime, and there is no uniformity in determining whether the perpetrator is the principal offender or an accessory in the joint crime. In response to the above problems, the specific analysis of specific cases should be persistent, and the subjective knowledge of the perpetrator should be comprehensively judged through a combination of subjectivity and objectivity, further detailed explanations of abnormal factors, and the scope of application of the crime of concealment should be reasonably limited by returning to the substantive interpretation of the constituent elements. In addition, it should be clarified that the perpetrator shall bear a proportional portion of the joint and several liability for the economic losses of the victims of the predicate crime, and comprehensively determine whether the perpetrator constitutes a principal offender or an accessory in light of whether the perpetrator has committed an act constituting the elements and their status and role in the joint crime.