Law in pipeline to make notaries accountable
By Hu Cong (China Daily)
Updated: 2004-12-28 00:31

Notary agencies would face heavy fines for providing fake services under a proposed new law.

The law calls for fines of up to 100,000 yuan (US$12,000) for fake notarization in addition to forcing the agencies to pay compensation for any losses. The law is currently under deliberation at an ongoing session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC).

The proposed law is designed to make the country's 3,162 notarial offices and 20,000 notaries more accountable and reliable.

The act was drafted amid rising public fury over cases involving notarial abuse.

In March, a lottery seller in Xi'an hogged the top awards -- three BMW sedans plus 360,000 yuan (US$43,500) cash -- by giving the winning tickets to his accomplices. The notary overseeing the lottery, as it turned out, did not verify the identity of the winners and was charged with dereliction of duty.

Creating a new law is imperative in order to "restore the image of notary agencies and buoy the public's confidence in notarization," said Nan Zhenzhong, a member of NPC Standing Committee, during a group discussion on Sunday. Notary services are currently regulated by a central government decree made in 1982.

The draft law outlines a number of situations where notaries are punishable, such as notarizing for family members, but added in general terms that "other activities banned by laws and regulations" are also punishable.

"Lawmakers would usually avoid using such all-inclusive general articles on punishment for fear of making administrators excessively powerful," said Liu Junhai, a researcher with the Institute of Law of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

This law makes an exception because obviously the drafters want to be specially strict, he said.

The draft also requires future notary hopefuls to pass the national bar exam, a mandatory test for accession to legal professions which currently applies to judges, prosecutors and lawyers.

Legislators agreed with the tough supervision principles, but questions remain in some other places.

One hot spot is the location of notarial agencies.

The draft requires notarial offices to be opened only in counties or districts of big cities, flying in the face of current practice that notarial services also exist at city and provincial levels.

"Downgrading notarial services could affect the quality of notarization and cause a brain drain," said NPC Standing Committee member Zhuang Gonghui. He said notarial services of provinces and big cities are more professional, whereas many irregularities tend to occur in small places.

"In many international deals in Tianjin, such as loans from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, only notarization by the municipal notarial office is accepted, whereas that of district offices is not," said Zhuang, whose constituency is in Tianjin.

China's notaries now verify more than 10 million civil and commercial cases each year, including 3 million or so international ones.

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