Yang Zuoxing of Shenma Mining Machinery was arrested on suspicion of embezzlement

On December 12, the Nanshan District Procuratorate of Shenzhen City published this information on the China Procuratorate website: Recently, our court approved the arrest of the criminal suspect Yang Mouxing for the crime of occupational embezzlement. At present, the case is being further processed. Wu said that the blockchain confirmed from multiple channels that Yang Mouxing in the article is Yang Zuoxing, the founder of Shenma Mining Machine.

(Photo from China Procuratorate Network)

Previously, Wu Blockchain exclusively disclosed that Bitmain reported the case for infringement of trade secrets, and then Yang Zuoxing of Shenma was investigated by the police. Yang Zuoxing once helped Bitmain design mining machine chips as a part-time worker, but left Bitmain due to uneven share distribution and founded Shenma Mining Machine.

In 2019, Shenma mining machines relied on their production capacity advantages and cost-effectiveness to grab some of the market share of Bitmain's high-computing mining machines. Recently, Shenma released the latest M30S mining machine, and Bitmain's S19 mining machine and 5nm chip are also in preparation. The mining machine war is about to start.

Shenzhen Bit Microelectronics Technology Co., Ltd., to which Shenma Miner belongs, is located at 801, Hangsheng Technology Building, Gaoxinan 6th Road, Yuehai Street, Nanshan District, Shenzhen. The Shenzhen Nanshan District Procuratorate also approved the arrest.

According to people familiar with the matter, whether to conduct the investigation and trial at the place where the case was reported/occurred (Beijing) or the company's location (Shenzhen) was the focus of the previous game between the two parties. As a Shenzhen company, Shenma may be given certain protection by the local government. On the contrary, Beijing is the headquarters of Bitmain. On the other hand, Bitmain's Shenzhen subsidiary Century Cloud Core is also a major taxpayer in Shenzhen.

According to the Criminal Law, if personnel of a company, enterprise or other unit use their position to illegally take the unit's property for their own use, if the amount is large, they shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than five years or criminal detention; if the amount is huge, they shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than five years, and may also be subject to confiscation of property.

Among them, "property of the unit" includes not only tangible property but also intangible property, such as intellectual property rights, non-patented technologies, land use rights, external debts, etc.

According to my country's Criminal Procedure Law, if the public security organ believes that a detained person needs to be arrested, it shall submit the case to the People's Procuratorate for review and approval within three days after the detention. The People's Procuratorate shall make a decision to approve or disapprove the arrest within seven days of receiving the request for approval of arrest from the public security organ.

After the procuratorate approves the arrest, the public security organ's investigation period is generally 2 months, but if the case is complicated, it can be extended for up to 7 months with approval. After the public security organ completes the investigation, it will transfer the case to the procuratorate for review and prosecution.

Data shows that the winning rate of trade secret infringement cases was low in the past. Between 2013 and 2017, the losing rate of trade secret infringement cases tried by the courts reached 63.19%, partial winning rate accounted for 27.54%, and winning rate accounted for only 9.27%. However, in recent years, as China has stepped up its efforts to protect intellectual property rights, the winning rate of related cases has increased.