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October 24, 2014

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Australian cooperation in nabbing Chinese fugitives shows exhilarating breakthrough

CHINA’S anti-corruption blitz has achieved a global breakthrough.

According to an earlier report, (“Australia helps catch China’s most wanted,” Shanghai Daily, October 22), Chinese police have reached an agreement with their Australian counterparts on extradition of corrupt Chinese officials who take residence in Australia, and also on seizure of their assets.

This is an exhilarating development, almost with milestone significance, for it suggests that China’s anti-graft campaign is finally being assisted by at least a few Western countries.

In the past, Western governments were reluctant to hand over so-called Chinese economic fugitives to China, mainly on allegations that they might be sentenced to death or tortured back home.

For instance, Lai Changxing, China’s most wanted fugitive who was involved in a smuggling racket and fled to Canada in 1999, was handed over for Chinese prosecution in 2011 and sentenced to life in prison the following year, after China promised the Canadians that he would be spared capital punishment.

Partly because of such pledges and dwindling numbers of executions in China, foreign governments have increasingly indicated their approval and support of China’s global manhunt for corrupt officials by signing extradition treaties with the country.

A result is a spike in cases where Chinese police succeeded in having fugitives repatriated to China.

Within less than three months of the initiation of “Fox Hunt 2014,” a crackdown on fugitives fleeing overseas that began on July 22, 128 of them have been arrested pending extradition to China, which is more than 80 percent of the total number of corrupt cadres caught from abroad last year.

Fear of complicity

There are signs that the fear of perceived complicity might also be behind some foreign governments’ acquiescence in Chinese requests to hand over the fugitives.

In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, which broke the story of the Sino-Australian agreement, senior Australian police official Bruce Hill said, “As time goes on, they start to put (their funds) into legitimate assets such as houses and property and shares and bank accounts, and then the money becomes their wealth.”

Hill is manager of the Australian Federal Police’s operations in Asia.

Through popular investment migrant programs, fugitives are able to launder their ill-gotten gains, posing a challenge to efforts to recover lost state funds.

Australia, and many countries for that matter, certainly doesn’t want to be seen as a safe haven for outlaws, or to have their image as a clean, fairly corruption-free country tarnished.

China’s economic leverage also goes a long way toward explaining foreign authorities’ growing readiness to go along with Chinese global manhunts.

More extradition treaties are expected, for instance, with Germany, where Premier Li Keqiang during his recent visit made a point of urging both sides to speed up talks on better cooperation in extraditing criminal suspects.

Many Chinese long disaffected by corruption at home should be happy to see that the arm of Chinese justice is getting longer, and loathsome plunderers of state assets are finally brought to justice.

However, they tend to regard the exemption of fugitives from the death penalty as a loss of a deterrent against corruption.

However morally repugnant they may feel about showing leniency to corrupt officials, it is a necessary trade-off if we are to secure their repatriation.

And that corruption is punishable by death isn’t a guarantee that it is always so. The death deterrent is only credible when it can be applied, here at home. But paradoxically, it has too often encouraged desperate flights abroad.

And no one would probably dispute that compared to seeing fugitives lead a high-flying life overseas, it is more desirable to have them brought back to face indictment. It’s like choosing the lesser of two evils.

On October 10, the Ministry of Public Security called on corrupt officials and economic suspects who take refuge overseas to turn themselves in to Chinese police.

This appeal was previously laughed off as irrelevant and unrealistic. Who would surrender to police once they are beyond the reach of Chinese justice they try so hard to escape?

Contrary to popular skepticism, the pleas do work. During the “Fox Hunt 2014” operation, 40 percent of the suspects approached and persuaded by Chinese police task forces agreed to be repatriated in exchange for clemency.

With the prospect of more extraditions of this kind, China’s anti-graft crackdown is becoming a global gambit.

Whether it will make more headway depends on not just the judicial and political reform at home, but also deft diplomacy and closer collaboration with the rest of the world.




 

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