SUN WUKONG Courts withdraw
verdict on ATM bandit By Wu
Zhong, China Editor
HONG KONG - A court in
Guangzhou, provincial capital of Guangdong, has
dramatically reduced a previous verdict of life
imprisonment to a five-year jail term on a young
man who was convicted of stealing money from a
bank by taking advantage of a malfunctioning ATM
machine.
The rare change of verdict in
such a case was made under pressure of public
opinion, which condemned the earlier
life-imprisonment sentence as ridiculously too
heavy.
This case is of significance. On
the positive side, it is evident that in today’s
China public opinions, expressed mainly through
the Internet and mobile-phone text messages, are
playing an increasingly important role in
supervision. On the other hand,
it
questions the independence of
China’s judicial system.
Chinese courts
are often said to be subject to political
interference by the Communist Party and its
government. This case seems to suggest that the
courts also take public opinion into consideration
when they make rulings. This may be unthinkable in
a place where the judicial system is independent.
However, the judicial system with "Chinese
characteristics" could hardly be said to be
independent, so it may not be such a bad a thing
if the public becomes a check on political
influence.
On the night of April 21, 2006,
Xu Ting, a young rural migrant worker from
northern province of Shanxi employed as a security
guard for Guangdong Provincial High Court, went to
withdraw cash from a bank ATM. He keyed in 1,000
yuan (US$143) and the machine churned out the
money, but he found only one yuan was debited to
his account. Overjoyed, Xu repeated the operation
again and again to withdraw 54,000 yuan, with 54
yuan debited to his account. Returning to his
dormitory, Xu told his friend Guo Anshan about it.
Then the two came back to the particular ATM
machine to withdraw money. According to the public
prosecutor, Xu took a total 175,000 yuan from it,
with 175 yuan debited to his account. In the same
way, Guo took 18,000 yuan. Afterwards, they went
into hiding, carrying the money with them.
On November 7, 2006, Guo turned himself in
and made a confession and returned the 18,000
yuan. A district court in Guangzhou passed a
"lenient" sentence of one-year imprisonment with a
fine of 1,000 yuan because of his "good attitude".
In May 2007, Xu was arrested, while on the run, in
northwestern Shanxi province and sent back to
Guangzhou to face prosecution. On November 29 last
year, Guangzhou Municipal Intermediate Court
jailed Xu for life, stripped him of all his
political rights for life and confiscated all his
personal property. In China, this is the heaviest
sentence short of capital punishment.
Widely reported by the media, Xu’s case
immediately attracted public attention. People
pasted their opinions on Internet chat rooms with
the absolute majority of them opposing the heavy
sentence on Xu. Mobile-phone users sent text
messages to protest against the ruling. Legal
experts and commentators also wrote in newspapers
to express their views with most of them against
the court ruling.
The court convicted Xu
for "stealing money from a financial institution"
which, according to China’s criminal code, is a
serious felony subject to heavy jail terms. But
critics said banks should be held responsible for
malfunctions of their ATM machines. Xu could use
an ATM machine to withdraw money simply because he
held a bank account. And had the said ATM machine
functioned normally, he would not have been able
to withdraw more money than was left in his
account. Thus his dishonest actions should come
under lesser charges of embezzlement and taking
illegal profits. Life imprisonment was simply too
harsh a sentence.
Many people were
outraged because most domestic banks are
state-owned or controlled and China’s laws tend to
protect the interests of banks more than those of
customers. Banks can generally blame their
customers for any fault, even if it is caused by
the bank itself. There have been a number of
reports about clients who withdrew cash from ATM
machines and found some 100-yuan banknotes were
fake. When they made their complaints with the
banks, they were asked to provide proof that the
said banknotes were from the lender's ATM
machines.
The influential China Youth
Daily reported that on March 26, a 27-year-old man
came to an ATM machine in Guangdong’s Foshan city.
Before he inserted his banking card, the machine
churned out a wad of banknotes. With Xu’s case as
a precedent, the young man was so scared he
immediately called the police. But the bank still
wanted to hold him responsible, threatening to
take legal action. The newspaper urged banks to
upgrade the ATM maintenance instead of always
taking a suspicious attitude toward customers.
What further angered the public was that,
compared with Xu, corrupt party and government
officials or executives of state-owned enterprises
are normally convicted with jail terms that are
much more lenient than life imprisonment, despite
their crimes being much more serious in nature and
the amounts of money involved in millions or even
billions of yuan. Slamming this as "ridiculous",
some Internet users sarcastically said that "He
who steals a nail is beheaded, but he who steals a
whole territory is promoted to Marquis," quoting
ancient Chinese thinker Han Fei.
Earlier
this year, lawyers in Beijing and Guangzhou wrote
petitions to the People’s Supreme Court and the
National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s
parliament, demanding a review of Xu’s case. As
public anger grew over the verdict, Guangdong
Provincial High Court in mid-January demanded a
retrial after Xu filed an appeal.
Before
the new trial began, Jiang Xingchang, vice
president of the People’s Supreme Court, told
reporters in Beijing on March 11 on the sideline
of the NPC annual session: "Xu should be punished
for ‘viciously’ obtaining money. But this is a
special case of stealing and it is inappropriate
to charge him for stealing funds from a financial
institution."
The next day, Guangdong
deputies attending the NPC annual session said the
sentence given to Xu was "too heavy". Zheng Hong,
president of Guangdong Provincial People’s
Procuratorate (equivalent to attorney general of
the province), said "a court ruling must seek a
balance between legal effect and social impact".
The Guangzhou Municipal Intermediate Court
handled the retrial and passed down its verdict on
March 31. Xu was given five-year jail term and a
fine of 20,000. He was also ordered to return the
170,000 yuan plus interest to the bank. He
declined to appeal again.
While some
critics still say the new verdict is still too
heavy, many others hail it a "victory of public
opinion". Xu is lucky that his previous sentence
aroused such public anger because many Chinese
have long been unhappy with the poor quality
services of state banks and with official
corruption.
Will others who have been
improperly jailed be so lucky?
(Copyright
2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing .)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
