Chapter 19 Figures in Corporate History: The Death of Cheng

In this world, apart from a few heartbroken family members, few people remember that there was once a Wenzhou woman named Zheng Lefen. In 1991, she was executed by shooting for speculation. Zheng Lefen was one of the protagonists of the Wenzhou Protest Event in 1986. In that typhoon-style money game, 300,000 people were involved, and more than 80,000 households were heavily in debt and bankrupt. When the government was determined to rectify this event, Zheng Lefen was selected and became the most vicious first offender. Zheng Lefen is a housewife in Yongjia. Her husband Cai Shengnan is an employee of the county bus station. According to people familiar with her, Zheng has a round face and a fat body. She is warm and generous. She has not studied for a few years. A small business with needles and threads.Yongjia is a place where private enterprises are very active, and the very famous Qiaotou button market in the early years came out of this county.When there was a storm in the meeting, Zheng Lefen, who was flexible and popular, naturally became a local small meeting leader.It was later discovered that more than 80% of the leaders of the Wenzhou Taihui were held by rural women like Zheng Lefen who were not highly educated or even illiterate.Zheng later described the scene at that time in his confession, saying, "The money was collected and placed on both ends of the wall first. Within two hours, the money at both ends was connected together. The entire wall was piled up all morning, and people still refused to leave. Go, shout for membership, throw wads of money in, and the militiamen bayonet them back."

The scale of the association chaired by Zheng Lefen was medium at that time. She recruited 427 people to join the association, earned 62 million yuan in membership fees, paid 60.1 million yuan in membership fees, and had a balance of 1.896 million yuan in revenue and expenditure. Zheng Lefen used this money to cover He built a three-story brick house and lent some to neighbors and friends. In the spring of 1986, the chain of the conference showed signs of breaking and collapsing, and panic spread like a plague in various towns and villages. On March 23, Zheng Lefen and his wife absconded. On April 30, Cai surrendered himself to the public security organs in Shanghai. On July 16, Zheng was arrested by the public security organs in Jintan County, Jiangsu Province.

Afterwards, the accounts of Zheng's Association were checked. After all the funds were recovered and sold, the actual loss of the membership funds was 497,000 yuan. On November 23, 1989, the Wenzhou Intermediate People's Court sentenced the defendant Zheng Lefen to death for the crime of speculation and deprived him of political rights for life. The defendant Cai Shengnan was sentenced to life imprisonment and deprived of his political rights for life. The judgment in the Zheng case caused controversy in the legal circle at that time.Some lawyers believe that the promotion itself is a scam, and Zheng's subjective purpose is to illegally occupy members' money, so it should be classified as a crime of fraud. Based on this, Zheng's crime is not worthy of death.

However, the court held that the defendant's crime focused on violating the national financial management system, and that he should be convicted of speculation, and could be sentenced to death according to the circumstances.The evidence provided by the court showed that Zheng Lefen did not defraud money. She signed a contract with the members and signed and stamped it.Zheng handles the collection, counting, accounting and payment of members according to the agreed time and amount.Before the auction collapsed, all the parties believed that their transaction with Zheng Lefen was a voluntary one, and they had no motive to defraud money.

Since the middle and late 1980s, non-governmental financial activities in coastal areas have never stopped. On the one hand, the state strictly prohibits this kind of behavior, but on the other hand, it is helpless to increase the financial services of private enterprises. The Zheng Lefen incident is exactly the tragedy that happened in this era.Despite receiving sympathy from the civil and legal circles, Zheng Lefen's life was forcibly terminated. On September 18, 1991, the Supreme People's Court approved the criminal approval of the Higher People's Court of Zhejiang Province, and upheld the death penalty for Zheng's crime of speculation, which was executed immediately. .

Woodward, the author of "A Brief History of Britain", once wrote: "History involves only a very small part of a nation's life. Most of the people's life and hard work, the past and the future will not have written records." He also quoted A famous sentence in "Ben Sira's Wisdom Teachings" said: "Some people are unknown, and they die without anyone knowing, as if they had never come to this world." Zheng Lefen is such a person. She is the most insignificant person in the history of Chinese enterprises. She was a death row criminal. She was only 38 years old when she died, and she did not leave a single photo.