The principal of 30 million yuan was handed over to friends who worked in securities companies to speculate in futures, but after three months, I lost only 450,000 yuan. Such a magical story really happened to an old lady in her 60s.
Judgment Document Network recently released a civil ruling document from the Supreme People's Court, revealing a tragedy caused by futures liquidation in 2015.
The legal document shows that the old lady Zhou, born in 1955, sued Z Securities, Z Futures Company and Li, and asked the three defendants to jointly compensate for losses of 29.5494 million yuan and interest losses of 5.7529 million yuan, and bear the litigation costs of this case.
It turned out that in April 2015, Zhou, accompanied by his neighbor and friend Li, opened an account at Z Securities and deposited 30 million yuan, and opened a futures account at the same time. Li himself is the full-time deputy secretary of the Party Committee, secretary of the Discipline Inspection Commission and chairman of the supervisory board of Z Securities. It is worth mentioning that Zhou and Li have known each other for a long time. Since 2005, ten years before the incident, Zhou has been entrusting Li to operate his securities account and has made profits.
Who knew that in less than 3 months, he encountered the extreme market in mid-2015. Due to futures liquidation, only 450,000 yuan remained in the account. Zhou sued Li, Z securities company and Z futures company in court. Zhou claimed that Li arbitrarily modified his account password and traded multiple times, resulting in huge losses. It is reported that the two have also signed the "Plan on Recovering Losses", and Li promised to compensate Zhou for the realization of one of his villas.
In the end, the court ruled that Li used Zhou's futures account to operate the futures account and used Zhou's futures account to conduct a large number of frequent futures trading between April 15, 2015 and June 30, 2015. During this period, Li changed his account password without informing Zhou of his transaction, which caused huge losses to the account and suffered major negligence. Li was found to bear 70% of the compensation liability (i.e. 19.2766 million yuan). As a person with full civil capacity, Zhou should also have full obligation to pay attention to futures trading risks.
Regarding whether Z securities companies and Z futures companies should bear joint and several liability for Zhou’s losses. The Supreme Court believes that the existing evidence is not enough to prove that Z Securities Company and Z Futures Company have committed illegal or irregular behaviors during the entire account opening process of this case.
Judgment Documents Network shows that this dispute, which occurred in 2015, only came to an end recently after the first instance and second instance and the civil ruling of the Supreme People's Court.
30 million principal was entered into the market, and lost 98% in less than 3 months
Judgment documents show that Zhou and Li are both born in the 1950s and are friends and neighbors, while Li is the chairman of the supervisory board of a securities company (Z securities company) and deputy secretary of the Discipline Inspection Commission.
According to Zhou's statement, in April 2015, the defendant Li described the investment prospects of the securities market to the plaintiff Zhou, exaggerated the investment returns, and asked Zhou to open an account to invest, and promised to provide stock information and participate in the issuance and subscription of Z securities firms. On April 13, 2015, Zhou came to the headquarters of Z Securities and accompanied by Li, and quickly completed all the account opening procedures, and signed the relevant information on opening a futures account without informing or testing risks and without knowing it. Li also told Zhou that he would open a futures account just to help him win over funds to hedge business and not lose money.
Afterwards, Zhou transferred 30 million yuan to the bank account corresponding to the securities account at Li's request, but Zhou claimed that he did not entrust others to engage in any securities trading. During this period, Zhou had inquired about his securities account, but failed to inquire for some reason (it was later learned that the securities account password was tampered with). During this period, Li also called Zhou to inform him that there was no risk in the funds.
On July 3, 2015, when Zhou checked his account again, he found that only 450,589.34 yuan was left, with a loss of more than 29.5494 million yuan. After the incident, Zhou said that she went to Z Securities' business department to print the transaction bill and found that the account was operated privately, causing serious losses to the account funds.
Zhou believes that Z securities companies and Z futures violate the Securities Law and other laws, neglect management and lack supervision, and do not provide risk warnings when opening an account. After opening an account, Zhou's account password was tampered with, and instructed the defendant Li to market in the name of Z securities companies, lacking the bottom line of practice, defrauding Zhou and inducing him to open an account. The defendant Li violated the regulations that securities practitioners are not allowed to operate on behalf of customers and arbitrarily modified Zhou's password to maliciously operate his account, causing Zhou to suffer huge losses. Z Securities, Z Futures Company and Li Mousan defendants constitute joint infringement and shall bear joint compensation liability.
Another party in this case, Li, defended that although Zhou's account suffered losses during Li's operation, this was a normal result caused by fluctuations in the futures market and had nothing to do with Li's operation itself. "As an investment market, the futures market itself coexists with high returns and high risks. This is a normal market performance and cannot be controlled by investors."
The chairman of the securities company's supervisor was sentenced to 70% compensation liability in the first instance
What is the fact?
Facts found by the first instance court showed that from April 15 to June 30, 2015, Li frequently operated transactions in Zhou's futures account. Zhou's futures account had an ending equity of 22156768.99 yuan on May 19, and an ending equity of 450,381.59 yuan on June 29. Due to huge losses in the account, Zhou and Li negotiated. Zhou drafted a "Plan for Recovering Losses". Li revised the manuscript and wrote words such as "operation errors" and "willing to bear part of the losses".
In terms of tampering with passwords, on April 15, 2015, Li changed the trading password of Zhou's futures account, and Zhou knew about it and recognized it; on May 19, Li changed the trading password of Zhou's futures account again; on June 30, Li changed the trading password of Zhou's futures account again at Zhou's request. During the trial of this case, both Li and Zhou agreed that Li has been operating for Zhou's securities account since 2005, and the passwords of bank-security transfer and bank-term transfer are the same.
The court held in the first instance that Zhou believed that he had entrusted Li to operate his securities account in 2005 and had made a profit. Later, Zhou opened a futures account with Li's whole process, and agreed to Li to change the transaction password after opening the account, and also set the bank futures transfer password to the same as the bank and securities transfer password. Zhou logged in to his futures account more than 30 times between April 17 and May 19, 2015. The above facts show that Zhou knew and recognized Li's trading in his futures account. Therefore, Zhou's claim that he did not entrust others to engage in any securities trading is inconsistent with the facts being found.
The court held that because Li changed the trading password again on May 19 without Zhou's consent objectively hindered Zhou's immediate understanding and control of the trading situation of his futures account. Li's behavior of trading without authorization after modifying the password caused huge losses in Zhou's futures account, infringing on Zhou's property rights and interests, and should bear corresponding civil liability according to law. Zhou did not stop it immediately after Li changed his password without authorization, and he also had certain faults and should bear some of the consequences on his own. At its discretion, the court determined that Li was liable for compensation for 70% of the loss, that is, 19.2766 million yuan.
The court also held that Zhou asked Z Securities and Z Futures to bear joint compensation liability for their property losses, which lacked factual and legal basis. Li was the full-time deputy secretary of the Party Committee, secretary of the Discipline Inspection Commission and chairman of the Supervisory Committee of Z Securities at the time. He was not responsible for securities or futures business, nor had the authority to conduct securities or futures business marketing. Laws, regulations and regulatory provisions do not prohibit him from engaging in futures trading. Z Securities and Z Futures have no right to supervise Li's futures account operation; in the reply letter to Zhou in 2016, the Securities Regulatory Bureau clearly informed him that "after verification, no violations were found in the opening of Zhou's futures account."
sued to the Supreme People's Court for retrial. Zhou raised three major reasons
After that, Zhou, who was still dissatisfied with the judgment, sued to the Supreme People's Court and applied for retrial.
Zhou proposed that the original court determined that Li was responsible for 70% of the compensation liability, and the facts were not clear.Zhou believed that Li was mainly at fault for the losses, and the original trial found that Zhou was at fault was too heavy. In this regard, Zhou raised three reasons:
First of all, from April 17 to May 19, 2015, the IP of Zhou's account login address was the headquarters of Z Securities Company, confirming that during the above period, Li logged in to Zhou's futures trading account without authorization, and it was not Zhou himself who operated it.
Secondly, the original trial believed that "because Zhou did not stop it in time after Li changed his password without authorization, he also had certain faults in preventing and controlling his own account risks, Zhou should bear some of the consequences on his own." In order to determine the facts, Zhou's fault was not enough to cause him to bear 30% of the fault liability. In this case, the entrusted financial management contract relationship established between Li and Zhou should be invalid. Until this case occurred, Z Futures Company did not hand over Zhou’s account opening information and approval procedures to Zhou, which caused Zhou to be unable to obtain emails and website information about his financial futures account transactions, which led to Zhou’s complete loss of control over the account in this case. Li changed the transaction password without Zhou's permission, and his behavior constituted infringement on Zhou. Li should bear all the infringement losses caused by violating Zhou's true intention and making unreasonable decisions.
Again, Li issued a "Plan on Recovering Losses" to Zhou. In the plan, Li admitted and promised to cash out one of his villas, and the house payment should be used to compensate Zhou for part of the losses or mortgaged to Zhou, and the remaining losses will be compensated within two years. Li has made a promise to make up for the losses, so he should also compensate Zhou for the losses as promised.
Zhou also proposed that Li's operational behavior has the characteristics of his duties. In addition, Z securities companies and Z futures companies shall bear joint and several liability for Zhou’s principal and interest losses of more than 30 million yuan.
Should securities companies and futures companies take the blame? The Supreme Court ruled in this way
. The Supreme People's Court believes that the focus of the dispute in this case mainly focuses on two aspects: First, whether it is appropriate to ask Li to bear 70% of the compensation liability; Second, whether Z securities companies and Z futures companies should bear joint and several liability for Zhou's losses.
First, the question is whether the original trial orders Li to bear 70% of the compensation liability.
The Supreme Court pointed out that after the original examination, Li was entrusted by Zhou to operate the futures trading account, and used Zhou's futures account to conduct a large number of frequent futures trading between April 15, 2015 and June 30, 2015. Among them, on May 19, 2015, Li arbitrarily modified his account password and did not inform Zhou of the transaction. From then on, from June 30, he caused huge losses in Zhou's account. Therefore, Li had major negligence in engaging in the entrusted affairs involved in the case, and Zhou had the right to ask Li to compensate for the losses. However, as a person with full civil capacity, Zhou should also have full obligation to pay attention to futures trading risks. After Li changed his password without authorization, he could have learned about the trading situation of his futures account in real time through other channels, so as to know and prevent Li from operating and protect his property rights. Zhou did not ask Li to modify his password again until June 30, causing him to be out of control of his futures account. The original trial found that Zhou's laissez-faire behavior was also at fault for his losses, and in accordance with Article 26 of the Tort Liability Law of the People's Republic of China, it was found that Li bears 70% of the compensation liability, which has factual and legal basis and is not improper.
Second, whether Z securities companies and Z futures companies should bear joint and several liability for Zhou’s losses.
First, it was found that on April 13, 2015, Zhou received training and testing of financial futures related knowledge at the Z Securities Headquarters, filled out the account opening application form, and signed a series of documents such as the "Futures Trading Risk Instructions". The staff of Z Securities had informed Zhou of relevant matters and risks before signing the documents. The Z Futures Company's account opening follow-up visit to Zhou on April 14, 2015 also showed that Zhou was aware of the risks of various business. In addition, the fines from the regulatory authorities only indicate that Z Securities' internal management is incomplete and does not clarify that Z Securities infringes on Zhou's interests.Based on this, the existing evidence is not enough to prove that Z Securities and Z Futures Company had illegal or irregular behaviors during the entire account opening process of this case.
Secondly, Li served as the full-time deputy secretary of the Party Committee, secretary of the Discipline Inspection Commission and chairman of the supervisory committee of Z Securities. His scope of authority does not include representing or acting as agents for Z Securities and Z Futures Company in securities or futures business marketing. According to the first instance complaint, Zhou still entrusts Li to operate without knowing the scope of his authority, and the "Plan on Recovering Losses" issued by Li only shows that Li's operation of Zhou's futures account is only a private act between Zhou and Li, and has nothing to do with the futures brokerage services provided by Z Securities and Z Futures Company, and there is no evidence that Li's aforementioned behavior was authorized by Z Securities. Based on this, the original trial determined that Li's behavior was not a professional act, and Zhou's claim that Z securities companies and Z futures companies jointly bear compensation liability cannot be established and there is no improperness.
In the end, the Supreme People's Court rejected Zhou's application for retrial.
The market is risky, so you need to be cautious when investing
Entrust others to trade stocks and futures. Who will lose money? This case sounded a wake-up call for investors.
Article 406 of the Contract Law of the People's Republic of China stipulates: "If a paid entrusted contract causes losses to the principal due to the fault of the trustee, the principal may demand compensation for the losses. If a free entrusted contract causes losses to the principal due to the intentional or gross negligence of the trustee, the principal may demand compensation for the losses."
In this case, the 60-year-old lady Zhou entrusted the account to Li, a friend who is the chairman of the securities company. Due to the huge losses caused by futures speculation, the court found that Li had major negligence due to improper transactions, unauthorized modification of the account password and not informing Zhou of the transaction situation, etc., Li was responsible as the trustee for 70% of the responsibility.
privately accepts commissions to help trade stocks or futures. Everyone is happy to make money, but in most cases, disputes will arise when they lose money. Especially when the market is poor, the problem is more likely to be exposed.
The market is risky, so you need to be cautious when investing. Stock trading entrustment is different from other general entrustment, because the returns and risks of stock trading are uncertain. Investors should improve their risk awareness, remain rational and cautious, and correctly understand returns and risks. History has shown time and time again that even securities or futures practitioners may not necessarily have higher investment levels.
Brandman China
