拾取他人信用卡并在ATM机上取款行为应定盗窃罪

拾取他人信用卡并在ATM机上取走大量现金的行为,不能简单地套用刑法第196条第三款之规定,也不能将ATM机的人工智能和“冒用”的含义在法律概念上扩大化,从而该认定为信用卡诈骗罪。ATM机是银行的业务工具,而绝非银行的“电子代理人”,ATM机在目前的条件下绝对不可能被骗．在ATM机上取出的钱属于信用卡失主所有,取款的行为违背了失主的意愿并属于秘密窃取,完全符合盗窃罪的构成要件。     

Need,Connections, or Competence? Criminal Achievement among Adolescent Offenders

Variations in criminal performance have been much less explored than other parameters of criminal careers. We explore the factors associated with differential criminal achievement in a sample of 154 adolescent offenders involved in cannabis cultivation. Drawing from theories of earnings attainment, we examine the role of drug use, criminal social capital and criminal human capital in providing either (a) monetary, or (b) in kind (cannabis) rewards from crime. Results reveal that criminal social capital and criminal human capital are related to performance while drug use explains little of the variation. Their effects, however, differ between outcomes: young offenders who are mainly connected to adult growers tend to be paid in kind, whereas respondents connected to a majority of other young growers tend to receive money. Criminal human capital is crucial to earning money but insignificant to obtaining larger payments in cannabis. Implications for criminal career and desistance research are discussed.     

投资银行诚信法律责任简析--以华尔街十大投资银行被罚为线索

投资银行对客户、投资者乃至整个社会承担一种特殊的诚信义务,这种义务集中表现在传统承销、经纪业务和证券研究咨询业务之间的利益冲突方面。违反这种诚信义务,投资银行要承担契约、侵权和诚信法律责任,受民事、行政和刑事法律制裁;加强对投资银行诚信义务和责任的监管是目前以美国为代表的发达国家证券、银行立法及司法的动向,对我国颇具借鉴意义。     

Money Laundering and Banking Secrecy in the Jordanian Legislation

Crimes targeting to damage the property of natural and legal individuals including states are in existence while the objective of people, groups and the entire organizations when committing crimes is illegal property gain in the structure of national, but also of global crime. However, they are insufficient hence they attempt to decriminalize money or other property earned in such manner, e.g. by inserting them into lawful operations and flows. Nonetheless, perpetrators of this kind of crime attempt to hide the right source of money or profit earned in such manner using all means possible. Banking secrecy is one of the main barriers that stand in front of anti-money laundering because it comprises of a barrier to access to bank deposits, and a protection for doubtful funds since it is one of the conventional rules pertinent to the work banks, where clients’ secrets and banking operations are saved by Bank’s commitment by law and custom unless there is provision in the law or in the agreement stating otherwise. This study is aimed at indicating the most significant stages and techniques of money laundering at banking institutions in Jordan and also discussing the function of the Jordanian banks in the light of the pertinent legislation.     

论银行公司治理制度的构建

在银行中,利益冲突的范围不同于实体经济中一般的工商企业,但是,一直以来银行的公司治理制度并没有给予银行中特别的利益冲突以特别关注。美国2007-2009年的金融危机表明,有必要调整和改革银行的公司治理结构。银行功能的社会公益性以及银行中特殊的利益冲突和其它的特点使得在构建银行的公司治理结构时,不能够简单地适用普通公司的治理模式,而要在股权治理、债权治理和监管治理之中寻求平衡。     

Criminal network vulnerabilities and adaptations

The current paper aimed to investigate the effectiveness of five law enforcement interventions in disrupting and dismantling criminal networks. We tested three law enforcement interventions that targeted social capital in criminal networks (betweenness, degree and cut-set) and two interventions that targeted human capital (actors who possess money and those who possess precursor chemicals). These five interventions are compared with each other and with random (opportunistic) removal of actors in two settings: (i) with network adaptation incorporated into the simulations and (ii) without network adaptation. Results illustrate that the removal of actors based on betweenness centrality was the most efficient strategy, leading to network disruption in the least number of steps and was relatively consistent across replications. Targeting actors who possessed money was the second most effective overall and was also relatively consistent in its disruptive effect.     

Extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction: Its impact on criminal justice

Public international law recognizes the right of states to protect themselves and their subjects against threats and damage from within their territory and outside. In the international sphere, the means and methods of national protection are restricted by the extraterritorial jurisdiction of courts and the laws they enforce.Criminal justice today is being confronted on an ever increasing scale by international criminal offenses that impinge on domestic concerns: drugs, securities and financial manipulations, money laundering, and terrorism, to mention only a few. This article discusses some of the issues that arise under the United States Constitution when criminal justice agencies are called upon to enforce U.S. laws beyond U.S. territorial limits. The principles of extraterritorial jurisdiction are discussed along with a number of United States court cases pointing to the importance of this new area of criminal justice.     

商业银行专利保护现状分析与策略研究

中国加入WTO以后,国内的商业银行面临着外资银行的强烈冲击及挑战,外资银行意图利用专利策略在我国银行业面前竖起一道“专利壁垒”。由于体制和观念上的原因,我国银行业一直以来并不重视金融产品的专利保护,致使金融产品数量少、质量低,且整个行业金融产品专利保护的意识淡薄。对此,国内银行业应该以积极的态度采取各种适当的方法来保护自身的知识产权。     

Politicization,banking experience and risk in savings banks

During the global financial crisis, criticism of the politicization and lack of professionalization of the savings banks has taken a central position in the political debate. The aim of this article is to analyze if the political presence of governing bodies in Spanish savings banks has been reflected in their various risk-taking behaviors before and during the financial crisis. We will also analyze whether the influence of the chairman’s banking experience matters. The results do not provide evidence that the composition of the boards of savings bank, or even their politicization, have played a role. However we show that savings banks run by a chairman with previous banking experience are likely to be significantly more solvent and less volatile.     

DESISTING DISTANCE DECAY: ON THE AGGREGATION OF INDIVIDUAL CRIME TRIPS*

The distance-decay function suggests a spatial pattern of criminal activity whereby most crimes are committed nearer rather than farther from the criminals' own homes. Presumably, the farther away the target, the lower the chances of crimes. The reason usually offered for this general pattern is an individual one: The costs to the criminal in terms of time, energy, and money increases with distance. We contend that it may be misleading to draw inferences about individuals from the aggregated decay function because it conceals individual variations in ranges of operation. This argument is supported by data randomly generated by the computer that show that even when individual criminals increase their crime rate with increasing distance, a distance-decay function still emerges at the aggregate level. This is not to say that an individual-level distance-decay function does not exist, only that it must be demonstrated by data at the individual level because distance-decay effects can characterize aggregate behavior even in the absence of individual distance decay.     

Banking reforms and the evolution of cost efficiency in Indian public sector banks

This paper analyses the trends of cost efficiency and its components across Indian public sector banks (PSBs) during the post-deregulation period spanning from 1992/1993 to 2007/2008. The study also examines the issue of convergence in cost, technical and allocative efficiency levels of Indian PSBs. The empirical results indicate that deregulation has had a positive impact on the cost efficiency of Indian public sector banking industry over the period of study. Further, technical efficiency of Indian PSBs followed an uptrend, while allocative efficiency followed a path of deceleration. We note that in Indian public sector banking industry, the cost inefficiency is mainly driven by technical inefficiency rather than allocative inefficiency. The convergence analysis reveals that the inefficient PSBs are not only catching-up but also moving ahead of the efficient ones, i.e., the banks with the low level of cost efficiency at the beginning of the period are growing more rapidly than the highly cost efficient banks. In sum, the study confirms a strong presence of σ- and β-convergence in cost efficiency levels of Indian public sector banking industry.     

关于犯罪对象的几个问题

将犯罪对象定义为犯罪行为直接作用的人或者物的问题是:一些罪的对象不具有被犯罪作用的直接性;将人的活动置于犯罪对象之外,不符合我国的立法实际。用现象与本质这对范畴来说明犯罪对象与客体的关系,在总体上弊大于利。作为犯罪对象的具体人、物或活动,是法益的构成要素,他们与法益是内部要素与整体的关系,应归该属犯罪客体一章。假币、贿赂、赌资等是行为对象,后者不包括具体的人。     

Market structure, performance, and efficiency of the Chinese banking sector

The Chinese banking system is evolving from a mono-bank system to one involving many banks of varied types and functions and there is a heated debate on whether competition can help to improve the performance and efficiency of the banks. This paper tests five hypotheses that have been proposed in the literature on the relationship between market structure, profitability, and efficiency using data envelopment analysis with a panel data of the 14 largest nationwide banks in China during the period of 1998–2007. The empirical results show clearly that neither the structure-conduct performance nor the efficient structure hypotheses hold in China. The strongest support is for the relative market power hypothesis that suggests that banks with differentiated services and products are those with higher market shares, and that they are able exercise their market power to obtain higher profits by setting higher prices. Technical efficiency has a significant effect upon bank profitability and the policy makers should promote further competition in the Chinese banking sector.     

Crime-money,reputation and reporting

The emphasis of government legislation on money laundering has been based on the assumption that reporting institutions are able to spot deviant customer behaviour and that implicitly such behaviour is criminal. This paper looks at the drivers for reporting of suspicious or unusual activity, in particular, focusing on the principle of reputation. It considers the evidence over bank disclosure within annual published reports with respect to their money laundering compliance activity; particularly examining whether there was any change in disclosure and hence reputation management reporting by those banks fined by the regulator for lapses of compliance. An attempt is also made to apply the principles of legitimacy theory to evaluate the association between money laundering and reputation looking for evidence of a ‘virtuous cycle of compliance’. However, the findings point to limited public awareness of money laundering and to the adoption of a deficit rather than enhancement model of reputation management.

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Russia Tomorrow

A well-known banker uttered a paradoxical thought: not only did we believe that Russia was somehow unique, a country with the potential for a wondrous transformation not governed by general economic laws, but we were evidently able to convince our Western partners of the same point. For this reason, in 1996 and 1997 they invested large sums of money in the Russian economy—approximately $20 billion in short-term treasury bonds (GKOs) and federal loan bonds (OFZs) alone. They also invested in Eurobonds, as well as pouring money into the stock exchange and bond market. Altogether these sums total $25-26 billion. Direct capital investments were also made.     

The roots of Russian organized crime: from old-fashioned professionals to the organized criminal groups of today

This study focuses on the development of persons and organizations in the successor states of the Soviet Union, with an emphasis on Russia. It examines the development of criminal professionalism in Russia between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries and argues that exiling peasants to Siberia contributed to the development of a criminal underworld and the creation of a professional criminal underclass. In the early to late Soviet periods, vory v zakone, or “thieves-in-law,” evolved together with criminal groups as a means to survive in the GULAG, these criminal groups operating within the Soviet prisons and penal colonies. Inadequacies of the Soviet system of central planning led to the criminalization of the Soviet economy and the emergence of the thieves-in-law as critical players. Activities such as racketeering, robbery, and other crimes were dangerous but predominantly secondary. The roots of the Russian mafia lie in the innermost depths of the Russian shadow economy. Some of the key aspects of the post-Soviet privatization process are analyzed together with the interaction between various levels of the Russian government and organized crime groups. It is argued that the state was not corrupted by organized crime groups, but rather the organized crime groups became the state. In the new Russia, organized crime groups and corrupt government executives work together to generatea new criminal state.     

贿赂的范围——以“性贿赂”为视角

从理论上讲,贿赂的范围应采物质利益说。考虑到刑法的谦抑性,“性贿赂”不应列入贿赂的范围,加强刑事法律的上游立法才是遏制“性贿赂”的根本所在。然而,罪刑法定是刑法的基本原则,我国刑法规定地非常明确,贿赂只能是“财物”,无论如何扩大解释,也不能将其他物质利益包括其内。所以,目前而言,我国刑法中的贿赂是指行贿人自愿交付或被迫提供给受贿人的,从而换取受贿人以其职务行为为其谋取利益的财物。     

洗钱罪构成要件与立法完善

我国现行《刑法》及《修正案》关于洗钱罪犯罪构成的设计还存在较多缺陷,与我国签署的相关国际公约还不协调,尤其未能把贪污贿赂犯罪纳入洗钱罪的上游犯罪,不利于惩治腐败犯罪,也不利于反洗钱的国际合作。因而,应尽快制定《反洗钱法》,惩治洗钱罪的上游犯罪,完善相关的刑事措施与制度,加强反洗钱国际合作。     

Power-seeking crime? The professional thief versus the professional launderer

Relating the concept of power to motives and objectives for criminal activities results in different images of criminals and their motivations. In this article, we aim to reflect on two different forms of crime (burglary versus money laundering) starting from a power perspective. We describe how the pursuit of power may or may not be related to crime, perpetrators and the policies that have been developed to prevent or repress these types of crime. By examining the motives behind both burglary and money laundering, we try to make clear how the concept of power and power pursuit leads to different rationales in criminal conduct. We try to determine to what extent ‘rational choice’ plays a role in this respect. As a conclusion, we argue that ‘power’ as such influences patterns of crime, victimisation and societal reactions (by means of criminal policy). The extent to which power accumulation is an outcome of crime, will in part determine the social reaction to crime and as a result, the perceived threat of crime.