Ill-gotten wealth of Xu is State property

China's top legislator Zhang Dejiang delivers a work report at a a plenary meeting of theNational People's Congress' annual session in Beijing March 8, 2014.[Photo/Xinhua]

Since Xu Caihou was the senior-most military officer put under investigation for bribery, his death (he died of cancer) has raised some questions in people's minds, with some asking what will happen to the enormous wealth he had amassed through illegal means.

According to the criminal justice system, it is up to judicial authorities to decide the fate of the illegally earned wealth of a suspect or defendant if he/she dies during the litigation process. The criminal law says that, if a suspect or defendant dies during investigation, the investigating organization should withdraw the case; if the suspect or defendant dies during the prosecution process, the procuratorial authority should not bring charges against him/her; if the suspect or defendant dies during trial, the case should be dropped; and if it is clear that the suspect or defendant is not guilty, he/she should be acquitted of all charges.

Although the judiciary is authorized to deal with the illegal gains of Xu, it can hardly take any action if there is no clear legal stipulation for such situations. In recent years, some suspects in corruption cases have committed suicide while the Party's discipline investigation was ongoing. One of the main reasons such suspects have committed suicide is that they wanted the investigation to be dropped so that they could avoid punishment and humiliation, and their families could keep their ill-gotten wealth.

Before the amendment to the Criminal Procedure Law in 2012, the judicial authorities in China had no legal basis for expropriating the properties of suspects or defendants who died before facing a trial. Some other countries too have devised special procedures such as judgment by default to expropriate the illegal gains of suspect's or defendant's who dies before facing trial.