Abstract: Civil cases involving the illegal collection of public deposits are mainly those involving private lending.It has become a difficult problem in civil trial that the validity determination of loan contract and guarantee contract goes beyond the threshold of civil law and touches upon the relationship between criminal law evaluation and civil law evaluation.In this regard,there are two opposing methodological standpoints in theory and practice,one holding criminal law first and civil law incidental,another thinking the separation of the two.However,both standpoints are biased.Only by eliminating the bias on the standpoints can the validity of the contracts be put on the correct track.The money that has been collected is not illegal acquisition so that the criminal measures for recovering or restituting should not be applied to the cases of illegal collection of public deposits.The crime of illegal collection of public deposits is not a"malum in se",but a "malum prohibitum".The validity of contracts involved should be judged on the base of the regulations in the Law of Commercial Bank (LCB).The Article 11 of the LCB is not intended to regulate the conduct of contract and approving the validity of related contract will not impede its progress.The Article 11 of the LCB is not a mandatory regulation in the sense of the Section 5 of the Article 52 of Contract Law,and the violation of it should not make the contracts void.

Key words: illegal collection of public deposit, criminal-civil crossed cases, validity of contracts, illegal acquisition, mandatory regulations