法院网络拍卖扣押物品惹争议

One of the two seized vehicles up for auction was a BMW sedan, which sold for about 330,000 yuan, or 52,000 USD, after 53 rounds of bidding. The other was a Mitsubishi Outlander SUV that sold for 67,000 yuan.

Both courts have confirmed that the public has shown great interest in the vehicles since the notice was put up a week in advance. Chen Yan, a staff member at the Beilun district court, says phone calls have been flooding in from across the country. He also explained that some people from Ningbo and neighbouring Shaoxing cities even paid personal visits to check out the vehicles.

"Since we first put the vehicles online for auction, we received more than 500 phone calls from interested people. And, 15 people came to look at the vehicles, some with the courts' approval and some without it."

Traditional court auctions are usually carried out by a third party in a brick-and-mortar auction house where buyers need to pay a commission, an area of the process typically ripe with corruption.

But unlike traditional court auctions, buyers on Taobao.com did not need to pay a commission. For example, the Beilun court listed the BMW sedan at a starting price of 199,900 yuan. At a traditional auction, buyers would be required to pay around 10,000 yuan in commission.

Li Ying from the Beilun district court explains:

"With the online auction, buyers don't have to pay the commission of 10,000 yuan. So, we believe that buyers benefit without a third party."

Zhejiang's High People's Court has said it plans to expand the online auction to 19 grassroots courts across major cities, including the provincial capital Hangzhou, Wenzhou and Shaoxing.

However, citing that Taobao is not a qualified auctioneer, some professional auction houses argue that the online auctions violate the laws and regulations on judicial sales and warn that such activities may disturb the market order.

Legal experts suggest that these two courts made a decent attempt at fair and transparent judicial auctions but they need legal support.

Yu Guofu, a lawyer in Beijing, says that Taobao.com is an excellent trading platform but that it should gain legal permission before running into the online judicial auction business.

According to the China Association of Auctioneers, auctions for property seized by courts accounted for 13 percent of auction house business in 2011, but some auction firms say judicial sales take up 40 percent of their business volume.

For CRI, I am Zhang Wan.