In China, a conviction and death sentence means certain execution. Nonetheless, on the morning of October 14, as he was about to be taken from his prison cell to be shot, an urgent order halted the execution of Yuan Baojing, the 39-year-old billionaire former boss of Beijing Jianhao Group and once one of China's fastest rising young entrepreneurs.

The case is being treated with extraordinary sensitivity by Beijing because two days later, Yuan's lawyer told the Shanghai-based China Business News the billionaire on the eve of his scheduled execution had transferred all his overseas assets, said to be worth tens of billions of yuan, to his wife. She is Zhou Ma, a well-known Tibetan dancer who teaches at the Beijing-based Central University for Nationalities. She agreed to transfer the money to the state.

It is traditional in China for prisoners to be given lavish banquets and visited by their families before their executions. Zhou Ma had come to see her husband.

The assets comprised equities including a 40 percent stake in an Indonesian oil company held by Yuan through a Hong Kong firm, which is reckoned to be worth about 50 billion yuan at current market value.

In addition, Yuan also passed to his newly acquired wife, bank accounts in Switzerland and elsewhere totaling "huge" amounts of money, his lawyer Liu Jiazong told China Business News. Liu would not reveal the exact figure but told the newspaper there was enough to make Zhuo Ma Asia's richest woman. "Now compared with her [wealth], even the number one on a publicized list of China's riches entrepreneurs will be dwarfed," he said.

The Forbes list for 2004 names Larry Yung (Larry Rong Zhijian), chairman of Hong Kong-based giant CITIC Pacific, as China's richest man with assets of US$1.5 billion.

Zhuo Ma told China Business News that she spoke with her husband just before he was about to be taken out for execution. He wished for her to donate all his wealth to the state, she said.

But since his life has been saved for the time being, she said she would spare no effort in attempting to reverse the verdict outright.

Since Zhou Ma's statements and those of her husband's lawyer appeared in the Shanghai-based newspaper, both have declined to speak to reporters. However, her comments immediately generated speculation that Yuan escaped death at the last minute because of his agreement to donate the huge sum to the state.

This is unprecedented. According to a Supreme Court judiciary interpretation, execution can be halted only when 1) the verdict is found to be wrong; 2) the convicted, awaiting death, provides leads to uncover other major criminal cases or renders outstanding meritorious service to the state; or 3) the convicted is pregnant. And after the execution is halted, it must report to a higher court for a new ruling.

Liu stressed that the suspension doesn't necessarily mean Yuan's life will be spared, since the death sentence could still be carried out after a review.

Although the obvious answer is that Yuan's life was spared by the contribution of what is believed to be an enormous amount of money to the state, a law researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences warned in an interview with The Standard that Beijing must handle the matter carefully or face jeopardizing the country's efforts to build a rule of law. The decision to spare Yuan's life suggests that money is simply above the law.

"If money could buy a life, then the law must clearly stipulate how much the price would be. Ten yuan? One million yuan or a hundred billion yuan? But this is ridiculous because it leads to the conclusion that the rich and the poor are not equal before the law," said the researcher, who declined to be named.

It is more likely, he added, that new evidence has been found, therefore, a review of his case is needed. Or Yuan may have provided clues to the uncovering of other criminal cases.

In the latter case, the researcher said, "such criminal cases ought to be very big ones which might involve very important persons to enable the suspension of his execution."

Thus, in either way, developments in Yuan's case will be dramatic and worth following closely, he said.

Yuan's path to riches is legendary. Born in 1966 to a poor worker's family in Liaoyang city in the northeastern province of Liaoning, Yuan in 1985 passed tough entrance exams to the Beijing-based Chinese University of Politics and Law. He had to take a low- paying part-time job to support his college study.

After his graduation four years later, Yuan joined the securities department of the China Construction Bank just as China began to restructure state-owned enterprises into joint-stock companies. Officials, employees of the SOEs and ordinary citizens were encouraged to buy stock.

Most people remained lukewarm as very few believed the reforms were promising - so much so that the Communist Party had to order its members and government officials to take the lead.

Yuan, however, saw an investment opportunity. China opened stock exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen with many of the joint-stock SOEs going public. Investors saw their share prices multiply geometrically.

Yuan made a small fortune. He also proved to be an excellent stock broker, with a record of 67 million yuan in a single day's trading volume.

In 1992, Yuan quit his job with CCB to set up his Jianhao company in a suburb of Beijing. Renting eight hectares of farm land, he grew good quality wheat seeds. He soon made his "first basket of gold" of three million yuan.

He then reoriented Jianhao's business to focus on securities. He helped restructure SOEs into joint-stock companies, acquiring stakes in them, and then helping to arrange their initial public offerings. At one time he jokingly called himself "China's No 1 stock player."

He may well have been. By 1996, his Jianhao Group's assets were estimated to be worth over three billion yuan.

Remembering his own bitter experience in school, the newly rich Yuan donated 10 million yuan to set up a scholarship in 1996 to help poor university students. He continued to make other charity donations and was given several awards for his outstanding achievements and good deeds.

Thus, his arrest on November 24, 2003, by Liaoyang police on suspicion of "hiring a hitman to murder" was shocking news.

On January 13, Yuan, together with his brother Yuan Baoqi, and Yuan Baosen, one of his cousins, were sentenced to death by the Intermediate Court of Liaoyang. Yuan Baofu, another of Yuan's cousin was given a suspended death sentence.

According to the court verdict, in the fall of 1996, Yuan and his brother met their accessory, Wang Xing, a former Liaoyang policeman, seeking to hire someone to kill a businessman named Liu Han. Yuan, the court verdict said, suspected that Liu had caused Jianhao Group a loss of 90 million yuan in trading futures in Chengdu.

Via his brother, Yuan passed 160,000 yuan to Wang. The brother, Yuan Baoqi, asked Wang to hire a hitman named Li Haiyang to shoot Liu Han. However, Liu narrowly escaped, the verdict said.

From 1997, Wang began to blackmail Yuan, demanding Yuan "lend" him money. After Yuan refused, Wang threatened to expose Yuan's involvement in the murder attempt.

In early 2001, the court verdict said, Yuan and his brother decided to kill Wang. Yuan gave his brother 300,000 yuan to carry out the mission. The brother talked to Yuan Baofu, a cousin, about the plan. Yuan Baofu discussed it with Yuan Baosen, Yuan's other cousin, and the latter agreed to take action.

In mid-November 2001, Yuan Baosen stabbed Wang, who was seriously injured but survived.

Wang continued to blackmail and threaten Yuan. Finally Yuan Baosen shot Wang to death with a hunting rifle on October 4, 2003.

Ultimately, the search for Wang's killer ended up at the Yuan family's door and all were arrested. In the subsequent trial, the Yuans appealed the verdict but were turned down, and the case played itself out to its present status.

As the Academy of Social Sciences researcher told The Standard, the possibility of buying one's way out of an execution raises all kinds of questions for the Chinese government. Or, if Yuan has provided authorities with information implicating other high-ranking businessmen or government figures, more sensational trials are possible.

In any case, where Yuan and his money go from here is an increasingly intricate guessing game that will play itself out in China's corridors of power.