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Phoebe Zhang

Zhang Dongdong has been fielding ever more requests for legal advice from jittery entrepreneurs, nervous government officials or their desperate relatives.
They usually do not tell him the whole story, and sometimes say it happened “to a friend”, but most want to know the same thing: what to do when they are targeted by China’s corruption busters.
“Some had received a tip-off that they were being investigated, some got a call from disciplinary inspectors asking them to cooperate, but in most of the cases, the suspects had already been held by disciplinary authorities, and their families came to us,” said Zhang, a partner at Beijing Han Heng Law Firm.
“We even ran into some extreme cases. Once, someone who had given bribes agreed to cooperate after being promised that they wouldn’t be investigated, but the authorities went back on their word after the bribe-taker was sentenced. In the most serious case, the client died after being taken into custody and the family came to us.”
It’s a black box. Everybody knows that it’s terrifying, but they do not know how exactly.
A Beijing-based criminal lawyer
Last month, Zhang began advertising consulting services for “bribery and corruption crisis response”. In a social media post, he said that as the authorities intensified their efforts to root out corruption across society, individuals faced “unprecedented criminal, financial and professional risks”.
His move comes as law enforcement authorities further toughen their approach to corruption. In April, the Supreme People’s Court and Supreme People’s Procuratorate made it easier for corruption suspects to be charged with criminal offences.
As President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign moves further into its second decade, the scope of suspicion has increased. A South China Morning Post analysis found that last year, watchdogs handed down punishments to 983,000 people and the number of senior officials taken down last year was three times the total for 2013.




As fears of being targeted grow, more state employees are reaching out to seasoned criminal lawyers like those in Zhang’s team to find out how to best protect themselves.
According to Zhang, few people were prepared to deal with a corruption investigation. A common reaction is to run. Once, a senior manager from a state-owned company fled to another province and claimed he was on a business trip to headquarters, while others escaped overseas, he said.
Another common reaction is denial. In one case he dealt with, the briber and recipient coordinated their stories and decided to deny the charges altogether, Zhang said, adding that the consequences of denial could be serious if bribery were proven.
His team could provide clients with strategies on how to present evidence, avoid detention by the supervisory authorities, reduce their sentences and safeguard their assets, he wrote.
Suspects needed to be able to draw a distinction between conduct that constituted a crime and conduct that did not, and must understand how leniency worked in the judicial system.
Another reason he launched corruption consultation services was that suspects were usually cut off from their lawyers after being detained by the disciplinary authorities, Zhang said. Custody is generally three or six months and can be as long as 14 months under special circumstances.
“When they are in custody, and the authorities tell their families to return any bribes, families do not know what to do. Do they pay or not? In some cases, authorities take a couple and leave only the elderly and young children at home,” he said.
The opacity of the system was partly why such investigations were so hard to deal with, said a Beijing-based criminal lawyer who wished to remain anonymous.


“It’s a black box. Everybody knows that it’s terrifying, but they do not know how exactly,” she said.
The most valuable time to get advice would be before disciplinary detention, said legal expert Zhang Qingfang. After that, a defence lawyer’s room for manoeuvre was narrow and it did not matter much whether families sought legal help, he said.
“But under some circumstances, if the requests raised by law enforcement authorities to families are illegal, if lawyers give legal and correct suggestions, it will avoid suspects being framed or their sentences becoming heavier,” he said.
Clients often missed the critical defence opportunities that appeared at every stage of the proceedings in these cases, Zhang Dongdong said.
Lawyers can spot the key issues that can potentially affect sentencing, including whether to define the alleged bribe as a legitimate social courtesy, how to determine the amount of money involved and whether an individual or their employer should be liable.
Family members should also record the extent of searches and which items were confiscated by the authorities and refuse to cooperate with illegal requests such as making false confessions, according to Zhang Zhiyong, a lawyer from the Chongqing Zhihao Law Firm.
In an article he published on social media, he wrote that he had been in the business for more than 20 years and had multiple senior officials’ sentences reduced.
In one case, he defended a vice-governor who was accused of abuse of power and taking a large amount of bribes. He successfully argued that his client deserved leniency because they had turned themselves in, returned their illicit gains and admitted their guilt.


In another case, Zhang Zhiyong found new evidence in the case of a director of a public hospital who had been charged with embezzlement. He used the evidence to persuade the authorities to downgrade the charge to the lighter “unlawful possession of property”.
Lawyers, however, were not always able to turn things around, the Beijing-based lawyer said, especially if the authorities used illegal measures such as torture to extract confessions.
There was usually more space for legal defence for bribe givers than bribe takers, even though these cases were usually investigated together, she said. If bribe givers cooperated with the disciplinary authorities, they might get off the hook as the authorities focused mostly on officials receiving bribes, she said.
But the restrictions on lawyers did not mean they could not develop effective strategies based on the evidence, said Zhang Dongdong, the lawyer from Han Heng Law Firm.
His clients “need professionals familiar with the law, the disciplinary authorities’ policies and their proceedings”, he said.


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Suspects should learn what to do before being detained, lawyers say, as they might spend months cut off from legal counsel


Suspects should learn what to do before being detained, lawyers say, as they might spend months cut off from legal counsel.


Corruption in China

Xi Jinping

Shi Zhiyong

Chinese lawyers offer coaching for when corruption busters come knocking

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Suspects should learn what to do before being detained, lawyers say, as they might spend months cut off from legal counsel

Suspects should learn what to do before being detained, lawyers say, as they might spend months cut off from legal counsel