Judiciary weighs in on debate over case of migrant's ATM windfall

Court and prosecution officials were eager to offer their views on the fiercely debated 'ATM case' at the annual meeting of the Guangdong People's Congress in Guangzhou this week, though not everyone found their comments appropriate.

The decision by the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court to jail Xu Ting - a young worker who withdrew more than 175,000 yuan by exploiting an automated teller machine malfunction - for life shocked the nation and sparked heated public and legal debate. The Guangdong Higher People's Court ordered a retrial last week, but the date for a hearing has not been set.

Shantou procuratorate deputy director Liu Aiping said on Tuesday that although Xu's action amounted to a crime, it should not be simply slotted into the criminal offence of theft. 'There is still a difference in the level of maliciousness and harm caused to society in Xu Ting's action compared with, say, the intentional breaking and entering of a financial institution.'

The criminal code stipulates that any serious theft at a financial institution can be sentenced in only two ways: life imprisonment or death. And any amount above 100,000 yuan is considered serious, according to a standard set down in 1997.

According to China News Service, the Guangzhou People's Procuratorate confirmed yesterday that it would investigate whether there was any dereliction of duty on the bank's part.

Guangdong's Chief Procurator Zhang Xuejun, raised the question of whether the bank should bear some responsibility since Xu had managed to exploit the ATM malfunction more than 100 times over two nights without detection. The machine had deducted only one yuan from his account for every 1,000 yuan withdrawn.