China’s fleeing corrupt officials end up in misery
- Source: The Global Times
- [20:26 June 09 2009]
- Comments
Many corrupt officials fleeing overseas didn't end up in a life of easy luxury as they had imagined.
Cover of the June issue of the monthly magazine in which this article was published.
Zuo Tianzhu, former director of the Land and Resources Bureau of Changsha city, Hunan Province, fled to the US with his mistress and millions of dollars in stolen money. However, after their luxurious life came to an end, his mistress left him and Zuo made a living carrying corpses.
The spiritual life is even more torturous for those at large. Corrupt official Yang Xiuzhu, former deputy director of Zhejiang Provincial Construction Department, was blackmailed by an old friend in Singapore and haunted by immigration police in the US. She finally found shelter in the Netherlands where she lived in secrecy. After a long isolation, she attended a Chinese gathering in Amsterdam on Christmas Eve, where she was immediately recognized by her old enemy and reported to police. Yang barely escaped and hid herself in a dark, dirty basement in Amsterdam. When the police captured her later, she seemed to be relieved to end the torture of hiding.
Over the past years, the escape of corrupt officials attracted a high degree of public concern. The Chinese government is trying aggressively to block their way.
China's prosecutorial and investigative authorities invented the persuasion method. After corrupt officials flee overseas, the authorities try to contact them directly and persuade them to return by offering a few conditions. Whether this mode is workable is still in question, however, since it requires the willingness of corrupt officials to open negotiations as well as judicial and policy exceptions, such as the promise of penalty reduction.
Extradition is the most formal method to pursue corrupt officials. However, China has to date only signed bilateral extradition treaties with neighboring countries. Treaties with the US, Europe, Australia and other developed countries are extremely limited due to disagreements with China on various legal issues such as the death penalty and human rights protection.
Prosecuting the offenders in the place to which they flee perhaps offers a hopeful new solution. On May 6, a local court in Las Vegas sentenced Xu Chaofan and Xu Guojun, ex-managers of the Bank of China's Kaiping branch in Guangdong Province, to 22 and 25 years in prison respectively under charges of fraud, money laundering, cross-border transfer of stolen money and forgery of passports and visas. This case created a precedent for sentencing escaped corrupt officials locally.
“Human flesh search” is a controversial new approach citizens are using to fight corruption through the Internet. Anonymous net users will mobilize to expose the privacy of the suspected offender on the Internet. This has proven quite powerful, and has been used to expose many corrupt officials. However, due to its lack of rationality and regulation, there is a high risk of infringing on the privacy of citizens. And the inability of some net users to control their actions has caused considerable controversy.
Many view the declaration of official property as the single best solution to the problem.
At the end of 2008, the income of officials in Altay prefecture in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region was made public. The public cheered at this initiative, which they believe stops the problem of fleeing officials at its roots.
“An archive system containing the details of officials' property should be set up soon,” said Chen Lei, a senior prosecutor in Fujian Province. “The system should cover not only officials' personal property and income, but that of their family, and also their overseas property. The supervisory and judicial departments should be authorized to punish officials who make false declarations.”
Global Business & Finance Magazine