Corporate Compliance Non-prosecution Reform in China: Who Should be the Target of Application?

Along with the widespread use of deferred prosecution agreements in criminal justice in several countries around the world, there is a new trend of deferring prosecution in corporate criminal cases for subjects who meet the conditions. In order to improve the modernization of enterprises and strengthen their ability to deal with criminal legal risks, China introduced a corporate compliance management system in 2007. In 20202, under the leadership of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, China began to explore the reform of "corporate compliance non-prosecution". In the reform of corporate compliance non-prosecution, "double non-prosecution" should be established in the context of China's corporate structure and judicial background. Since the responsibilities of the enterprise and the individual can be separated, compliance non-prosecution can be adopted for enterprises in large corporate criminal cases. Since the responsibilities of the enterprise and the entrepreneur are "combined into one," prosecutors can apply a non-prosecution after plea of guilty to the entrepreneur in micro and small enterprise criminal cases.