BEIJING - To
curb the flight of corrupt officials who abscond
with public funds abroad to evade punishment,
China's top legislature ratified the United
Nations Convention Against Corruption in a
unanimous vote on October 27.
"The
unanimous vote demonstrates the strong
determination of the top lawmaking body to stamp
out corruption in collaboration with the
international community," said Li Mingyu, member
of the Standing Committee of the National People's
Congress.
With the approval by 157 members
of the committee, China will become one of the
first group of more than 30 countries to enforce
the international law, which will go into effect
on December 14 this year. The convention "is
conducive to the repatriation of corrupt criminals
fleeing abroad and the recovery of Chinese assets
illegally transferred to foreign lands", Premier
Wen Jiabao said in a bill submitted to the
legislature October 22.
Chinese police
authorities have said that, as of the end of 2004,
more than 500 Chinese suspects of economic crimes,
mostly corrupt officials or executives of
state-owned companies, were at
large in foreign countries.
They took with them a total of 70 billion yuan
(US$8.4 billion) of public funds, and only a
fraction have been extradited to China.
The UN anti-corruption convention, adopted
by the UN General Assembly on October 31, 2003,
contains a variety of stipulations on
transnational corruption including prevention
measures, the criminalization of specific acts,
international cooperation, assets recovery clauses
and implementation mechanisms. China signed the
document in December 2003. By September 15, 30
countries will have ratified the convention, which
will go into effect on December 14 of this year.
The convention is consistent with China's
anti-corruption strategy of putting equal emphasis
on the punishment and prevention of such crimes
and does not contradict Chinese domestic laws,
said Wu Dawei, vice minister of foreign affairs.
"Most importantly, [the convention] will provide a
strong international legal basis for China to
overcome [its] difficulties in investigating [and]
extraditing criminals suspected of corruption and
recovering Chinese assets in foreign countries,"
Wu said.
China has been active in seeking
international cooperation in the fight against
corruption. Since 1998, Chinese prosecutors have
captured a total of about 70 criminal corruption
suspects from abroad through legal assistance
channels with foreign countries.
The
successful extradition from the United States in
2004 of Yu Zhendong, a former local branch head of
the Bank of China in Guangdong Province, was
lauded as the most powerful deterrent to date for
corrupt Chinese officials, since would-be
fugitives had considered the US as the safest
destination to escape from punishment. Yu
misappropriated US$483 million before fleeing to
the US.
Chinese police have also seized
more than 230 Chinese criminal suspects from more
than 30 countries and regions during the 1993 to
January 2005 period with the help of Interpol, the
international police body. Fan Xin, another
lawmaker, told Xinhua that China should proceed
immediately with the formulation or revision of
its laws, including criminal codes, statutes on
money laundering, and private-sector bribery, to
better adapt the Chinese legal system to the UN
anti-corruption convention.
