Strictly punishing financial fraud crimes in accordance with the law is an inevitable requirement for safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of investors, as well as an important measure to ensure the smooth operation of the capital market and safeguard high-quality economic development. According to recent media reports, from 2024 to November 2025, procuratorial organs across the country prosecuted 191 people for financial fraud crimes, including 102 people prosecuted from January to November 2025, an increase of 21% year-on-year. The Supreme People's Procuratorate has simultaneously assigned and tracked the financial fraud cases transferred by the China Securities Regulatory Commission to the Ministry of Public Security, and supervised the handling of 43 major financial fraud criminal cases. A number of major cases involving Jinzhou Port, Jin Tongling and other highly concerned individuals have been prosecuted in accordance with the law, effectively deterring financial fraud crimes. This series of data and related measures demonstrate China's continuous efforts to crack down on financial fraud crimes, and also demonstrate the urgency of addressing such crimes. Financial fraud is a 'cancer' in the capital market. The financial information of listed companies is an important basis for investor decision-making, and its authenticity and accuracy not only directly affect the property safety of the majority of investors, but also relate to the smooth operation and healthy development of the capital market. The preparation of false financial information through fictitious transactions, inflated profits, and concealed liabilities not only misleads investment judgments and causes financial losses to investors, but also erodes market trust, accumulates systemic financial risks, and ultimately endangers national financial security. Therefore, strictly punishing financial fraud crimes in accordance with the law is an inevitable requirement for safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of investors, as well as an important measure to ensure the smooth operation of the capital market and safeguard high-quality economic development. In recent years, China has continuously made efforts in legislation, law enforcement, and judiciary, gradually building a multi-level and three-dimensional comprehensive punishment and prevention system for financial fraud. The 11th Amendment to the Criminal Law significantly increases the punishment for securities and futures crimes, increases the punishment for crimes such as fraudulent issuance of securities and falsification of important information disclosure, and explicitly includes controlling shareholders, actual controllers who organize or direct financial fraud in the scope of criminal accountability, achieving precise crackdown on the source of fraud. The relevant departments have further strengthened law enforcement and judicial work, formulated multiple documents, unified case handling standards, improved the full chain crackdown and all-round accountability system, smoothly implemented the criminal linkage mechanism, and vigorously eliminated the "ecosystem" of financial fraud through measures such as "punishing the ringleaders" and "pursuing accomplices". In addition, by publishing relevant typical cases, we can guide the whole society to enhance their awareness of the rule of law and form a strong deterrent against potential offenders. At present, financial fraud crimes have shown many new characteristics and trends: firstly, the means of committing crimes are becoming more covert, often covering up illegal facts through complex transaction structures across markets, regions, and formats; The second is to use new financial instruments, cross-border fund transactions and other forms to carry out fraud, and the means to evade supervision are complex and diverse; Thirdly, some intermediary agencies have failed to fulfill their duties diligently and even participated in fraud, resulting in the failure of the "gatekeeper" mechanism; Fourthly, financial fraud is often intertwined with illegal and criminal activities such as embezzlement of funds and irregular guarantees, resulting in a combination of harm. In the face of these new situations and challenges, only by keeping pace with the times and improving governance strategies can we further enhance the comprehensive governance level of financial fraud crimes, strengthen the precision and effectiveness of the crackdown. Firstly, we need to strengthen the deterrent effect of criminal crackdowns. While pursuing the legal responsibility of the companies involved, we will severely punish the controlling shareholders, actual controllers, and relevant executives who organize and direct fraud behind the scenes, hold accountable intermediary agencies and practitioners involved in fraud, and resolutely crack down on the chaos of "identity protection" and "responsibility suspension". Secondly, we need to improve the mechanism for linking execution procedures. Further optimize the process of case transfer, evidence connection, and information sharing between securities regulatory authorities, public security organs, procuratorial organs, and judicial organs, ensure that suspected criminal cases enter the criminal procedure in a timely and smooth manner, and resolutely eliminate the phenomenon of "not transferring cases" and "substituting punishment for punishment". Thirdly, we need to establish a sound civil compensation and accountability system. Fully implement the special representative litigation system for securities disputes, improve the mechanism for investor protection institutions to support litigation, fully utilize the dual functions of civil compensation in terms of punishment and compensation, and reduce the cost of investor rights protection. Fourthly, we need to strengthen joint punishment for dishonesty. Establish and improve the integrity records of practitioners and institutions in the capital market, promote relevant departments to implement joint credit penalties in accordance with the law, restrict dishonest individuals in administrative licensing, financing credit, industry access, and other aspects, and build a full chain treaty binding framework of "one dishonesty, everywhere restricted". The rule of law is an important guarantee for the healthy development of the capital market. At the beginning of this year, the China Securities Regulatory Commission led a cross departmental symposium to promote the comprehensive punishment and prevention system for financial fraud in the capital market, demonstrating the continuous deepening of the comprehensive and three-dimensional accountability system that effectively connects administrative law enforcement, criminal punishment, civil recovery, and integrity constraints, and the further improvement of the normalized and long-term punishment and prevention mechanism. This is not only an upgrade of the governance approach for financial fraud crimes from "single point breakthrough" to "system integration", but also means that the rule of law governance of the capital market has entered a new stage of coordinated and in-depth promotion, and the joint force of comprehensive punishment and prevention of financial fraud crimes will continue to strengthen. We believe that by continuously improving the legal system, strictly regulating law enforcement and judiciary, and deepening departmental coordination, we will inject solid legal energy into accelerating the construction of a safe, standardized, transparent, open, dynamic, and resilient capital market, and safeguard the stable and far-reaching development of China's economy. (New Press) (Author Peng Xinlin, Professor at Beijing Normal University and President of the Beijing Enterprise Legal Risk Prevention and Control Research Association)