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March 13, 2015

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Criminals finding no place to hide

Source: Xinhua | March 13, 2015, Friday | Print Edition

INTENSIFIED campaigns against social ills ranging from corruption and terrorism to environmental pollution and wrongful convictions were outlined in two reports yesterday.

Targeting high-ranking “tigers” in China’s anti-corruption drive, prosecutors investigated 28 highly placed officials last year, compared with eight in 2013, Cao Jianming, head of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, said in his work report at the annual session of the National People’s Congress in Beijing.

In campaigns to combat lower-level “flies,” prosecutors investigated 3,664 cases of graft, bribery and embezzlement of public funds each involving more than a million yuan (US$164,000) last year. A total of 4,040 public servants at county level and above, including 589 at and above city or bureau level, were investigated.

A total of 55,101 people, a 7.4 percent increase over 2013, were investigated for duty-related crimes in 41,487 cases.

The Supreme People’s Court work report, delivered by chief justice Zhou Qiang, showed that courts convicted and punished 44,000 people in 31,000 cases of embezzlement and bribery last year.

“Corrupt criminals shall be severely punished according to the law no matter how high their positions are and how powerful they are,” Zhou said.

In line with lawmakers’ proposals of harsher punishment for bribing staff of state organs, judicial organs handled more cases of such crimes last year.

A total of 7,827 people were prosecuted for bribery last year, a 37.9 percent increase over 2013, according to the SPP report, which showed 2,394 people were convicted for offering bribes last year, up 12.1 percent year on year.

A “zero tolerance” approach had been taken to judicial corruption with 404 staff in the procuratorate investigated and punished last year while 2,108 court officials were punished for violations.

Cao said China was working with other countries to block “the last route of retreat” for corrupt officials.

Prosecutors had seized 749 suspects last year, with 49 of them captured or persuaded to turn themselves in from 17 countries and regions including the United States and Canada.

In July, an operation called Fox Hunt 2014 was launched with the aim of bringing back officials who had fled abroad.

“We will actively advance efforts to have fugitive suspects repatriated and recover their illegal proceeds of corruption,” he said, so that corrupt officials could “never profit economically from their illegitimate deeds.”

Zhou said: “Foreign countries must not become a safe haven for the corrupt to escape justice.”

As of November last year, China had concluded 39 extradition treaties and 52 criminal judicial assistance treaties with other countries, among which 29 extradition treaties and 46 criminal judicial assistance treaties are already in force.

Turning to wrongful convictions, Zhou said: “We deeply reproach ourselves for letting wrongful convictions happen. Courts of all levels should learn a serious lesson from these cases.”

The SPC will improve the mechanism to effectively prevent and correct wrongful convictions, he said.

In 2014, courts reheard 1,317 cases and corrected a number of wrongful verdicts, Zhou said.

One example was a rape-murder case in 1996 in Inner Mongolia, for which 18-year-old Huugjilt was executed.

Huugjilt was cleared last December.

Cao said prosecutors will impose stricter scrutiny on detention centers and prisons while working harder to stop police from holding suspects for too long.

Law enforcement officers whose actions lead to wrongful convictions, such as extorting confessions through torture, will face serious consequences, Cao said.

Zhou highlighted growing threats from terrorism and separatism and vowed severe punishments for offenders. He said the courts had convicted 712 people for instigating secessionist activities or participating in terrorist attacks in 2014, a year-on-year increase of 13.3 percent.

Overall, courts in China concluded some 1.02 million first trials in criminal cases last year and convicted 1.18 million people.

“We will actively participate in the fight against terrorism and secessionism, severely punish violent terrorist crimes according to the law, and severely punish all types of crimes that gravely endanger the safety of the people,” Zhou said.

Terrorism has been on the rise. Three people were killed and 39 others injured when a vehicle plowed into crowds in Beijing on October 28, 2013.

On March 1 last year, knife-wielding assailants killed 31 people and injured 141 others at a train station in Yunnan’ s provincial capital Kunming.

Polluters faced harsher punishments last year, according to Zhou, with the number of pollution-related criminal cases up 8.5 times.

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