Embezzlement Of Public Funds A Number Of Issues To Study

The crime of misappropriating public funds is a kind of criminal offence utilizing the convenience of public office and this crime has serious harm to the society. In recent years, there comes up some new features about this crime, such as more frequent occurrence, larger amount of funds involved, craftier and more covert means used in this crime, and there is the increased number of criminals to misappropriate the public funds for purpose of some illegal acts, including illegal speculation in stocks, real estates, land use rights and smuggling, gambling and going whoring, etc, all of which seriously undermines the good order of socialist economy system and damages the ongoing market economy construction in China. The crime of misappropriating public funds not only infringes the property right to the public funds, but also disrupts the probity in act of duty deserved by the civil servants and causes a crisis of public confidence in trustworthiness of all civil servants. In the judicial practices, there is much confusion in the determination of some issues regarding this crime due to the lag of law making. Therefore, for efficient cracking down on the crime of misappropriating public funds, it is necessary to correctly apply related theories and provisions in the criminal laws and accurately determine some important issues regarding this crime.This article is divided into three parts. In the first part, it is to argue whether there are different criminal patterns related to the crime of misappropriating public funds. As the focus of this part, it expatiates on the accomplished pattern and attempted pattern of this crime with the feature of "public funds being misappropriated but not really utilized", as well as the determination of specific criminal patterns of this crime.In the second part, it focuses on how to determine the participants in the complicity related to the crime of misappropriating public funds and the common intent of all participants thereof. It also pays much attention to the determination of participants and the common intent between the misappropriating person, the utilizing person and any other non-utilizing persons.In the third also the last part, it dwells on how to determine the quantity of crimes regarding this crime. By referring to relevant theories and doctrines in the criminal laws, it makes a detailed analysis on the conversion of crimes between the crime of misappropriating public funds and other crimes, as well as on the involvement of any other crimes other than this crime by committing any illegal acts during misappropriating public funds.