Prosecution work needs broad social conscience
- Source: Global Times
- [21:59 January 20 2010]
- Comments
PO: A lot of netizens are very concerned about the "fishing case" in Shanghai, where law enforcement officials entrapped ordinary drivers and fined them for supposedly operating illegal cabs. What's happening over this?
Chen: Municipal leaders and city government place great importance on this issue. And their attitude is quite clear.
This kind of poor behavior should be resolutely corrected, and criminal actions should be firmly dealt with.
As we all know, in the recent case related to the team that carried out this entrapment, the court has already sentenced them.
In fact, in some other cases, authorities also found internal faults after they investigated, and now they are reflecting on this and correcting their policies.
From this issue, we could see how to improve law enforcement. I think that the attitude of our judicial departments, especially the prosecution authorities, is very firm.
Once we find criminal groups, serious crimes, or bribes, a case needs to be brought.
PO: What's happening over the collapse of the "Lotus River Garden" build-ing last summer? Are charges being brought?
Chen: There are two matters in this "Lotus River Garden" building case.
First, right after the incident, the police detained the relevant personnel, and we make six arrests.
Now the prosecution is being reviewed, and the principal suspects will soon be indicted.
Second, prosecutors have investigated job-related crimes and malfeasant cases in this incident.
Through the inspection, we found that there were indeed cases of misappropriation of public funds.
The chairman of the real estate development company is a former township land requisition director. He was found to have embezzled more than 40 million yuan ($5.86 million) of State-owned assets.
So prosecutors decided to arrest him, and public funds were also recovered. This case is still being prosecuted.
In 2010 our anti-corruption department will investigate all manner of significant economic crimes in order to ferret out corruption, bribery, and dereliction of duty.
PO: There have been a lot of recent reports over corruption in demolition and the relocation of previous residents. What measures are you taking?
Chen: We are really quite concerned about the demolition and relocation issue.
As it is directly related to people's interests, we have successively investigated a number of cases, such as the police officers who reported fraudulent accounts to get more compensation. We have dealt with some such cases in past few years.
In addition, we noted false reports from demolition companies.
For example, if the demolition area is 200 square meters, the company may report it as 300 square meters. We also found other similar cases.
We need to strengthen prosecutions in these areas, and we've suggested to the government that it needs to manage them better.
At the same time, we will also pay close attention to possible problems over the future allocation of affordable housing.
