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State Organs |
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Supreme People's Procuratorate |
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| People's procuratorates are organs for legal supervision in China. The state sets up the Supreme People's Procuratorate, local people's procuratorates at all levels, and military and other special procuratorates. The Supreme People's Procuratorate is the highest procuratorial organ in China. It is responsible to the NPC and its Standing Committee, and reports its work to them. The Supreme People's Procuratorate independently exercises the highest procuratorial power according to law and is not subject to interference by any administrative organ, social organization or individual. According to the Constitution and statutes, the Supreme People's Procuratorate exercises the following functions and duties: --Leading the work of local people's procuratorates and special people's procuratorates at all levels; -- Directly accepting and handling according to law the criminal cases involving corruption, bribery, tort to citizens' democratic rights and misconduct in office, placing them on file for investigation, and deciding whether to initiate prosecution or not; -- Performing legal supervision over the judicial proceeding of courts and the investigation of criminal cases; -- Deciding on arrests and prosecution of major criminal cases according to law; -- Performing legal supervision over the judicial activities in criminal cases; -- Lodging protests according to law against effective but wrong judgments and rulings made by people's courts at various levels to the Supreme People's Court; --Exercising legal supervision over activities conducted in prisons and reform-through-labor institutions; -- Providing judicial interpretations of questions concerning special applications of laws in procuratorial work; and -- Sponsoring negotiations with foreign procuratorial departments and conducting judicial assistance. Work of the Supreme People's Procuratorate On March 9, 2005, Procurator General Jia Chunwang reported the work of the Supreme People's Procuratorate to the Third Session of the 10th NPC. In 2004, procuratorates at various levels approved the arrest of 811,102 criminal suspects investigated by public security and state security departments and initiated public prosecution against 867,186 people, up 8.3 percent and 9.3 percent over the previous year, respectively. The procuratorates were active in regulating and rectifying market order and intensified crackdown on grave economic crimes of smuggling, financial fraud, and tax dodging and evasion. Through the year, they approved the arrest of 20,425 suspects and prosecuted 22,179 people for economic crimes, 6.3 percent and 3.4 percent higher than a year earlier, respectively. Of this, the arrestees and defendants on charge of infringing upon registered trademarks, patents and copyrights accounted for 602 and 638 people, up 13.4 percent and 9.3 percent, respectively, year on year. In strict line with the guiding principles of the CPC Central Committee to fight corruption, the procuratorial organs also focused on job-related crimes and brought 43,757 government employees under investigation on related charges, a 0.6 percent year-one-year increase. Among the investigated officials, 35,031 were involved in crimes concerning bribe-taking and embezzlement of public funds, and 8,726 were probed for dereliction of duties and abuse of power. The procuratorates prosecuted 30,788 people involved in economic crimes and retrieved about 4 .56 billion yuan in direct economic losses. The investigated cases of bribe-taking and embezzlement of public funds of more than 1 million yuan totaled 1,275 in 2004, up 4.9 percent over the previous year. A total of 2,960 officials at or above county or section level were brought under investigation for corruption charges, including 198 heads of departments and bureaus under provincial governments or ministries and 11 provincial and ministerial leaders, and prosecution was instituted against 1,980 of them within the year. Efforts were made to strengthen supervision on litigation activities. In 2004, the procuratorates, according to law, propelled investigation organs to file 20,742 cases meeting the requirements of registration but failing to be registered. They also repealed 2,699 wrongly registered cases. In performing legal supervision over the judicial activities in criminal cases, they lodged protests against 3,063 effective but wrong judgments and rulings and raised 1,387 suggestions on rectifying law breaches. By the end of the year, procuratorates across the country settled 1,209,247 cases of reduction of jail terms, release on parole and warrant of medical treatment on bail. The procuratorial organs enhanced legal guarantee of human rights. To safeguard the right of appeal of litigants, they reexamined according to law all cases in which the litigants rejected procuratorial decisions and decided to correct 786 of them. Through the year, all links of the procuratorial investigation prevented extended detention, and procuratorial organs in 29 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government, compared with 14 in 2003, attained the goal of eliminating extended detention in litigation proceedings. |
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