(Selected from the translated work titled The Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China, authored by Robert Zhang and Steve Li, criminal defense lawyers registered in Shanghai, China.)
Article 161 [Illegally Disclosing and Refusing to Disclose Important Information] Where a company or enterprise that is legally obligated to disclose information provides false financial and accounting reports to shareholders or the public, conceals important facts from them, or fails to disclose other important information that should be disclosed in accordance with the law, the directly responsible chief and other directly responsible individuals of the entity shall be sentenced to imprisonment of not more than five years or custody and/or a fine if the interests of shareholders or others are seriously damaged thereby or the offense is committed under other serious circumstances, or to imprisonment of not less than five years but not more than ten years and a fine if the offense is committed under particularly serious circumstances.
Such a controlling shareholder or actual controller of a company or enterprise specified in the preceding paragraph that commits or organizes or instigates the commission of the acts specified in the preceding paragraph, or conceals relevant matters, resulting in the occurrence of the circumstances specified in the preceding paragraph, shall be punished in accordance with the provisions of the preceding paragraph.
Where such a controlling shareholder or actual controller who commits any of the offenses stipulated in the preceding paragraph is an entity, the entity shall be sentenced to a fine, and the directly responsible chief and other directly responsible individuals of the entity shall be punished in accordance with the provisions of the first paragraph.
