BEIJING
Chinese prosecutors will require one to two months to prepare a case against former security chief Zhou Yongkang, state-run media reported Thursday, saying the case would serve as a model for future corruption trials.
Zhou, 73, is the highest-ranking official to be investigated under President Xi Jingping’s anti-corruption drive.
Earlier this month, he was formally charged with bribery, abuse of power and intentional disclosure of state secrets.
The China Daily quoted an unnamed senior official from the Supreme People's Court as saying that judicial authorities would regard Zhou’s trial as “an ordinary criminal case” and would “provide him with no special exceptions under the law."
According to judicial authorities, the patterns and procedures of the case would be followed by future graft trials since prosecutors had been assigned by the Supreme People's Procuratorate
The Procuratorate said April 3 that a court in a provincial-level municipality, northern Tianjin, had been assigned to prosecute Zhou -- the highest ranking figure to face criminal charges since 1949.
According to the Daily, the move meant a national-level special corruption court would not be used, as had been the case in past trials.
Judicial officials said the trial at the Tianjin High People's Court would enable Zhou to appeal to higher courts such as the Supreme People's Court or the Supreme People's Procuratorate, which have the authority to order a new investigation.
According to the indictment against Zhou, his alleged abuse of power had led to grave losses of public property and "bad" impacts on society, while his intentional disclosure of state secrets was a "particularly serious" act.
As secretary of the Political and Legislative Affairs Committee from 2007 until his retirement in 2012, Zhou had overseen China's police, intelligence agencies, court system and paramilitary forces.
Last July, he was placed under investigation for suspected serious disciplinary violations by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. In December, he was arrested, expelled from the Communist Party of China and placed under investigation by the top prosecuting department.
According to a media report cited earlier by the Daily, Zhou’s son Zhou Bin had accumulated a large amount of wealth as a result of his father's influence in the gasoline industry.
In one case, the son had allegedly sold an oilfield -- bought from the China National Petroleum Corporation for less than 20 million yuan ($3.2 million) -- for 550 million yuan.
The elder Zhou – previously a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, China's top decision-making body – is said to have links with Xu Caihou, the former vice chairman of the Central Military Commission who died from cancer last month, as well as Bo Xilai, the disgraced party boss in Chongqing who was sentenced to life imprisonment last year on bribery charges.
Since its launch in 2013, Xi’s anti-corruption campaign has investigated tens of thousands of suspects, including dozens of high-profile individuals at the top of the Communist Party.
