At present, China's criminal law does not stipulate simple usury as a crime. If the means used by loan sharks in the process of debt collection violate the crimes stipulated in the criminal law, it may constitute a crime. Common crimes include illegal detention, intentional injury, provocation, forced transaction, etc. In addition, there is another kind of usury that may constitute a crime, called usury crime. The crime of lending at high interest rate refers to the act of obtaining credit funds from financial institutions for the purpose of lending, and then lending the funds to others at high interest rate to earn spreads, with a large amount of illegal income. The object of the crime of usury is the allocation of credit funds and the order of interest rate management by the state, not the property rights or personal rights of borrowers. Therefore, the purpose of this crime is to prevent someone from earning spreads from bank arbitrage and endangering the national financial management order.

First, how to lend usury is legal.

How to lend usury is illegal? Generally speaking, usury refers to the act of asking for loans with particularly high interest rates. At present, there are no more than three different views in the legal field.

(1) As long as the loan interest rate exceeds or in disguised form exceeds the interest rate stipulated by the state, it constitutes usury. For example, the current regulation is that the interest rate of private lending should not exceed four times the interest rate of banks in the same period, which belongs to usury and is not protected by law.

(2) It is considered that the legal boundary of usury should not simply take the bank's loan interest rate as a parameter, but should set the guiding interest rate of private lending according to the actual situation in various places. Those who exceed the upper limit of the guiding interest rate constitute usury. If the agreed interest exceeds the statutory guidance interest rate, the excess is invalid, and the creditor has no right to request payment.

(3) usury is a kind of loan that exceeds the normal interest rate. As for the number of loan sharks, because there is no legal provision, in practice, we can only make a concrete analysis of the loan relationship according to the spirit of the Civil Code and related laws and the principle of protecting the legal loan relationship and being conducive to production and stabilizing the economic order, and then determine whether it constitutes a loan shark.

No matter how many differences there are, there is no question of suspected crime in these three viewpoints.

The crime of illegal business operation refers to a serious act that violates the law and disrupts the market order.

According to Article 225 of the Criminal Law: "Anyone who commits any of the following illegal business operations in violation of state regulations shall be punished for the crime of illegal business operations:

1. Without permission, engaging in franchise or monopoly commodities or other commodities whose operation is restricted by laws and administrative regulations;

2. Buying and selling import and export licenses, import and export certificates of origin and other business licenses or approval documents stipulated by laws and administrative regulations;

3, without the approval of the relevant competent departments of the state, illegally operating securities, futures or insurance business;

4. Other illegal business operations that seriously disrupt the market order. "

At the same time, Article 70 of the Provisions of the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security on the Standards for the Prosecution of Economic Crimes specifies the standards for the determination of this crime. None of them involved usury. Therefore, it is very common that usury does not constitute a crime.

Private lending has promoted economic development, but usury has brought many adverse effects to people's lives and social stability. At this time, we should pay attention to usury in daily life.

Second, does usury constitute a criminal offence?

Usury does not constitute a criminal offence, but usury is not protected by law.

People's Republic of China (PRC) Civil Code

Article 680 usury and self-determined interest rates are prohibited. It is forbidden to lend at high interest rate, and the loan interest rate shall not violate the relevant provisions of the state.

If there is no agreement on the payment of interest in the loan contract, it shall be deemed that there is no interest.

If the loan contract does not specify the payment method of interest, and the parties cannot reach a supplementary agreement, the interest shall be determined according to the local or the parties' trading methods, trading habits, market interest rates and other factors; Loans between natural persons are regarded as interest-free.