Chinese leaders take ‘unprecedented’ steps to clean up mystery of vanished supreme court documents
- Police, prosecutors and anti-corruption investigators to work with party’s top legal body to get to bottom of scandal
- Rare step takes investigation out of court’s hands after its initial denials triggered a public outcry
The Chinese authorities have taken the rare step of setting up a top-level investigation team to look into the mysterious disappearance of legal documents from the country’s highest court.
The Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, the Communist Party’s top body on legal affairs, announced Tuesday night that it would lead a joint task force with representatives from the anti-corruption watchdog, prosecutors and police to investigate the case, which has rocked the legal profession.
“A joint panel has been set up to investigate in accordance with the law and [party] discipline,” a statement posted on the commission’s website said. “The relevant facts will be made public as soon as they have been confirmed.”
Legal experts said that the move was an “unprecedented” signal of the leadership’s determination to get to the bottom of the case.
Last month it emerged that documents relating to a long-running contract dispute concerning the ownership of a mine in Shaanxi province had vanished from the Supreme People’s Court office of judge Wang Linqing in 2016.
