As the Compliance Blog mentioned in “An Incriminating Board Decision of D&B in Violation of Chinese Privacy Law”, if a crime is a unit crime (or the crime committed by a non-individual entity), China law imposes responsibility for the crime committed by such a unit also on a couple of categories of individuals – “the  responsible persons who are directly in charge” (直接负责的主管人员) and “the other persons who are directly responsible” (其他直接责任人员).  The former is the person who decided to commit a crime; the latter is the person who executed the criminal acts.  If a local Chinese manager and the unit in China that the manager works for are held liable under the Chinese law, could his or her supervising executives in the U.S., Europe or other non-Chinese jurisdiction be held criminally liable? Or should they shrug off the possible liabilities by claiming “the mountain is high, the emperor is far away?”

The answer is no because of the extra-territorial effect of Chinese criminal law.  In other words, if a foreign “emperor” (i.e., an “emperor” that is not from China) commits a crime outside the territory of China, but inflicts harm to an entity or individual in China, Chinese criminal law would be applicable to punish such a foreign “emperor”, which, however, results in another issue: is there a foreign “emperor” ever held liable for a local Chinese crime?  The answer is, a bad news to many people, yes.

After posting the above blog, a well informed resource told us that the Data and Operation Director of the Greater China of D&B (Hong Kong) – Mr. Yuan who is a Hong Kong citizen was arrested as well for the crime of “illegally obtaining private information from Chinese citizens.”  Although an integral part of China politically and from the perspective of territory, Hong Kong is a non-Chinese jurisdiction in legal system.  Therefore, Mr. Yuan is an “emperor” not less foreign than from the U.S. or Europe.

We were also told that the legal counsel of Mr. Yuan submitted that Mr. Yuan must not be held liable for Roadway’s crime because Mr. Yuan is not a staff member of Roadway at all.  However, Mr. Yuan is nonetheless categorized into “the  responsible persons who are directly in charge” (直接负责的主管人员)—a decision maker of Roadway.