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October 23, 2014

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Guangdong to get tough with officials

CHINA’S southern province of Guangdong is seeking approval for a draft plan that will debar “naked officials” — whose families have emigrated overseas — from holding senior government positions.

The local government is seeking the public’s opinion of the draft, which, if approved, will become a law under the province’s anti-corruption regulation.

According to the draft, officials from government departments, government-affiliated institutions and state-owned companies will be barred from taking up senior positions if their spouses or children settle overseas.

The ban also covers officials holding vital or sensitive jobs that concern state secrets, national safety and economic supervision.

In recent years, naked officials have been singled out in China’s anti-corruption drive, but it is hard to detain them without the assistance of overseas police.

The usual modus operandi of the officials is to first send their families overseas and shift assets offshore and then flee at the first whiff of trouble.

With time, they put their ill-gotten wealth into legal assets.

The number of naked officials in Guangdong is unusually high.

“Actually, we realized it was a problem way back in 2008,” Huang Xianyao, head of the Party disciplinary watchdog in Guangdong, said in August. From 2009 to 2013, the province punished 22 corrupt naked officials, including Luo Yingguo, the former Party secretary of Maoming City, whose son and daughter held Macau and Australian citizenship. Luo received a suspended death sentence in 2013 for taking bribes.

Guangdong has taken the lead in the country in getting tough with naked officials. And it tightened the noose around them after a central disciplinary inspection team warned the province in February that there were still too many naked officials around.

In July, the Party’s organization department in Guangdong said it had found 2,190 naked officials.

About 280 of them asked their families to return, but more than 860 agreed to be demoted.




 

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