When his Jun-Ho, a key midfielder from the South Korean World Cup football team, signed with a Chinese club, it was an indication of China’s ambition to dominate the most popular sport in the world.
But after the Chinese police arrested him two years later, accusing him of corruption and fixing of matches, he became a symbol of a different kind: the ruthless efficiency of the legal system of China.
Mr. Son had insisted for his interrogators that he was innocent. He asked for a lawyer, but the police told him, through a Korean translator, that we were not necessary. Police threatened to bring his wife and asked how his children would manage if both parents were detained.
After months in detention, he was offered an agreement in which he was promised a lighter punishment in exchange for the signing of an admission of guilt. He took it.
It was a decision he would regret later, saying that he had only signed under constraint. “Fear exceeded me, and without fully understanding the accusations, I confessed, hoping to return to my family,” SA told journalists at a press conference in South Korea, fighting on tears. “It was a naive error.”
The arrangement that Mr. SA was proposed, known as a litigant in China, is a legal tactic which, according to the researchers, has eroded the rights of the accused in a judicial system which has long been against them.
The courts and the police in China respond to the Communist Party and the conviction rate is more than 99%. However, the party has attempted in recent years to create a fair justice system, in particular by introducing the “advocacy” system.
This system has now transformed the way justice is done in China by allowing authorities to deal with cases faster. But that also made the system less fair, according to lawyers and experts, giving prosecutors more power to determine who is punished and for how long.
In recent years, when Xi Jinping, the senior Chinese leader, has led repressions against corruption in society, the advocacy has become a critical tool used by prosecutors. It was used in surveys on managers, soldiers, financial industry and, as in the case of Mr. Son, sports, as well as in campaigns to eliminate organized crime and so-called forces of evil.
“The Clemence is practiced in a disturbing manner,” said Pu Zhiqiang, a former human rights lawyer in Beijing who was struck off in 2016 to “cause trouble” for criticizing Chinese officials. “The threats used during interrogations, sleep deprivation, no one regulates the process.”
A black box
Mr. Son’s detention in 2023 was part of a wider national anti-corruption campaign in football. Many senior officials were trapped, including the former president of Chinese Football Association, who was sentenced to life last year for accepting bribes.
The authorities announced in September that a two -year investigation had discovered games of chance and a fixing of matches involving 120 games and 41 football clubs. Mr. his was one of the 43 players and the officials that China would be prohibited from sport for life.
Many details on the survey have not been made public and the question of its innocence cannot be resolved immediately. But Mr. SA’s account has given an overview of how individuals accused of crimes can be forced to accept advocacy agreements. This also gave an idea of how prosecutors use guilty pleas obtained in this way to build larger cases against other suspects – in this case, his teammate, Jin Jingdao.
SA told journalists that he thought that the document he had signed, who was in Chinese, recognized that he had received a payment of about $ 28,000 from Mr. Jin. Mr. his said that there was nothing illegal in payment, describing it as a normal financial transaction with friends.
Mr. SA had been detained in a cell in the northeast of the city of Shenyang with 20 other people for almost a year, he told journalists. “Every day felt like hell because I didn’t know when I was released.” It was only after having signed this document in March of last year, he said that he was authorized to return to South Korea.
He later learned that Mr. Jin had admitted that he corresponds to the fixation and that the document that Mr. SA had signed would be used as proof that he had received a bridge pot from Mr. Jin to launch a game in 2022. Mr. Jin was then also prohibited for life.
Concerns about coercion
When China introduced the leniency system in 2018, it was hailed as a major progression of equity that would allow those who admitted to having voluntarily cultivated an “indullicity” sanction.
The objective was also to rationalize a legal system struggling with a workload that has jumped in recent decades. Clémence agreements can be offered to suspicious offenders even before official costs are deposited. They now represent around 90% of convictions.
But lawyers and experts say that suspects are often induced to make false confessions. Even The best prosecutor of the prosecutor Recently reported a need for prudence, saying that the plea agreements should be examined for signs of coercion.
In recent interviews with Chinese media, judges have raised fears that the courts are only leniency of plaid on rubber without studying them closely. The law professors wondered if the quotas imposed on prosecutors created incentives to conclude hastily agreements.
XI Wei, professor of law at the normal university of Anhui in the center of China, in the search for this practice, Found 226 cases in which the defendants had pleaded guilty, but the authorities later discovered inappropriate errors and sorrows.
A powerful tool for shakedowns
Defense lawyers claim that advocacy agreements are also used for rail entrepreneurs and take care of it, especially since the Chinese economy continues to fight.
In the Chinese city in the southwest of Mianyang, which was struck by a slowdown in housing, the authorities in 2021 arrested Zeng Jianbin, a property developer, as well as its employees. Local police called them gang members and asked the public to submit evidence of crimes to prove their assertion.
The local government continued after Mr. Zeng and the assets of his business, entering acres in the field, hundreds of apartments and dozens of cars. His company had paid a deposit of $ 83 million for a field of land sold at auction by the city. The authorities have taken over the land and came at auction.
Before the start of Mr. Zeng’s trial and his partners in May 2023, 14 employees – accountants, managers, staff and guards – admitted. But during the trial, these confessions began to collapse.
Some employees said they did not understand the accusations and only confessed in the hope of being released, according to a trial transcript published online. Another employee was illiterate and could not read what he had signed.
However, the judge accepted the advocacy agreements and sentenced the 14 employees to the prison.
These convictions then provided the basis of the prosecutors’ case against Mr. Zeng, who was accused of leading a gang, among other accusations. He denied all accusations, accusing prosecutors of having used false confessions as proof against him.
“It confuses well and badly, and that does something from anything,” he said, according to the transcription. “These costs are not in fact based.”
Chen Siyu, Mr. Zeng’s wife, shared the details of her husband’s test on social networks and with journalists. She was detained for two years to “publish false online information” and suspected of money laundering, and was only released in December.
Zeng was found guilty of almost all accusations and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Denunciation
Mr. Son, the South Korean football player, said that he had decided to give his side of history after the Chinese football association gave him a life ban in September and referred the question to the director of football, FIFA.
In January, FIFA informed the South Korea football association that it rejected China’s demand for a life ban. A spokesperson for FIFA did not reveal why the organization refused China’s request, but it is unusual for the international organization to go against the decision of a national association on such a serious allegation.
Through his agent, SA refused to be questioned. During the press conference, he said he believed that an audio recording of his interrogation exists and that the recording exempts him.
Asked about Mr. Son, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that the case had been closed because the player had “admitted guilt and accepted punishment”.
Haemin Kwak has contributed to research.
