Trial of China’s Bo Xilai has yet to start

GUIYANG, China (Reuters) – The trial of disgraced senior Chinese leader Bo Xilai, the central figure in the country’s biggest political scandal in decades, will not be held on Monday as some media had reported, a court official in the southern Chinese city of Guiyang said.

“To date, the People’s Intermediate Court of Guiyang has received no information whatsoever about the trial of Bo Xilai taking place in Guiyang,” said Jiang Hao, a court official in the city, the capital of Guizhou province.

A file photo on March 9, 2012 of top Chinese politician Bo Xilai. The trial of Bo, the central figure in the country’s biggest political scandal in decades, will not be held on Monday as some media had reported, a court official in the southern Chinese city of Guiyang said.EPA

“If the next step is to hold the Bo Xilai trial in Guiyang’s court, then, as according to rules, we will inform our media friends promptly,” Jiang told reporters at the court.

A report last week by Hong Kong’s Ta Kung Pao newspaper said Bo, the charismatic former Communist Party chief of the southwestern city of Chongqing, would be tried in Guiyang from Monday. The Beijing-backed newspaper has accurately reported issues close to the Chinese leadership in the past.

Asked if prosecutors had sent the case to the court, Jiang said: “According to information I have received, they have not.”

It is still not clear where Bo’s trial will take place. He has not been formally charged although he was expelled from the Communist Party in September and made the subject of a list of sordid allegations: bending the law to hush up a murder, taking huge bribes, and engaging in “improper sexual relations with multiple women”.

The trial will likely not be held until after China’s national parliament holds its annual session in March, according to a report on Monday on the website of the Global Times, an influential tabloid published by the Communist Party’s official People’s Daily.