Beijing promises lighter sentences to get corrupt officials home
By Peh Shing Huei 20 May 2009
BEIJING: ‘Please come back, we will not kill you.’
With an increasing number of corrupt officials escaping persecution by fleeing the country, China’s judiciary announced last week that its relatively new ‘soft approach’ is showing results.
Instead of fighting long and expensive battles to extradite them back to China, prosecutors have been persuading these offenders to turn themselves in, promising a lighter sentence instead of the death penalty.
The Supreme People’s Procuratorate said that this ‘coaxing’ method is working, with a dozen officials lured back for justice in the last three years.
‘It’s faster than extradition and it saves a lot of time and resources for both countries,’ Beijing Normal University law professor Huang Feng told The Straits Times.
Former Yunnan provincial official Hu Xing, who fled to Singapore in 2007 after accepting bribes worth 40 million yuan (S$8.5 million), is one such success story.
He was cajoled to return to China and received a life sentence instead of possible execution through lethal injection.
Explaining why errant officials who had fled would willingly return to face the law, Prof Huang said: ‘They very often face legal restrictions in the new countries, with assets frozen. And they may also realise that the new places may not be as good as they had imagined and they have problems settling in.’
But he added that this softer approach has its limitations.
‘Some people fled China precisely because they want to be away and do not want to face the law here. It will be very difficult to convince them to return.’
To further bolster its overseas reach, the Chinese government is also cooperating with other countries, working to try corrupt officials in foreign land instead of pressing for extradition.
In Las Vegas earlier this month, two former managers of the Bank of China and their wives, who had absconded with US$482 million (S$705 million), were sentenced up to 25 years in prison.
The Chinese government praised the verdicts yesterday, and called on the United States to extradite the two men as soon as possible.
‘It shows that no matter where you hide and how long you run, the international law will catch up with you,’ said Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu.
It is a coup for the Chinese government, eager to show that they are able to capture errant officials even though they have left the country.
Government figures show that there are about 500 corrupt officials still at large abroad, although it is believed that the actual number is much higher. They are said to have embezzled about 10 billion yuan.
Combating graft has been a relentless task by the Chinese government since the country opened up in 1978, and it has always been keen to show that it is doing something about a problem which many argue has become worse in the last three decades.
The government tries to fight graft, or at least must appear to be trying. The public regularly lists corruption as the biggest problem facing the country, with a survey before March’s legislative sessions showing it to be the top concern, above the economic recession.
‘Fighting corruption here is like handing out speeding citations at a Formula One race: all one has to do is look around,’ said Beijing-based analyst Russell Leigh Moses, adding that graft is a useful means to attack opponents within the Chinese Communist Party.
The latest warning by the party came over the weekend, when the powerful Central Military Commission sent a surprisingly high-profile, and public, directive to senior military officers to curb corruption.
The last known case of military corruption was in 2006, when navy deputy commander Wang Shouye was sacked. But the People’s Liberation Army’s abuses are rarely made public.
‘No one has good statistics on the actual degree of corruption in the PLA,’ said international relations expert Li Mingjiang, referring to the insular and secretive PLA.
‘But most analysts would agree that it is indeed rampant and to a large degree corruption in the military is even more serious than that in the civilian sector,’ he said.
‘Although we are not sure about the whole situation and percentage, it has become a conventional wisdom that promotion at the low- and mid-ranking levels usually involves bribery.’
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‘Please come back to China, WE WON’T EXECUTE YOU’
Beijing promises lighter sentences to get corrupt officials home
By Peh Shing Huei
20 May 2009
BEIJING: ‘Please come back, we will not kill you.’
With an increasing number of corrupt officials escaping persecution by fleeing the country, China’s judiciary announced last week that its relatively new ‘soft approach’ is showing results.
Instead of fighting long and expensive battles to extradite them back to China, prosecutors have been persuading these offenders to turn themselves in, promising a lighter sentence instead of the death penalty.
The Supreme People’s Procuratorate said that this ‘coaxing’ method is working, with a dozen officials lured back for justice in the last three years.
‘It’s faster than extradition and it saves a lot of time and resources for both countries,’ Beijing Normal University law professor Huang Feng told The Straits Times.
Former Yunnan provincial official Hu Xing, who fled to Singapore in 2007 after accepting bribes worth 40 million yuan (S$8.5 million), is one such success story.
He was cajoled to return to China and received a life sentence instead of possible execution through lethal injection.
Explaining why errant officials who had fled would willingly return to face the law, Prof Huang said: ‘They very often face legal restrictions in the new countries, with assets frozen. And they may also realise that the new places may not be as good as they had imagined and they have problems settling in.’
But he added that this softer approach has its limitations.
‘Some people fled China precisely because they want to be away and do not want to face the law here. It will be very difficult to convince them to return.’
To further bolster its overseas reach, the Chinese government is also cooperating with other countries, working to try corrupt officials in foreign land instead of pressing for extradition.
In Las Vegas earlier this month, two former managers of the Bank of China and their wives, who had absconded with US$482 million (S$705 million), were sentenced up to 25 years in prison.
The Chinese government praised the verdicts yesterday, and called on the United States to extradite the two men as soon as possible.
‘It shows that no matter where you hide and how long you run, the international law will catch up with you,’ said Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu.
It is a coup for the Chinese government, eager to show that they are able to capture errant officials even though they have left the country.
Government figures show that there are about 500 corrupt officials still at large abroad, although it is believed that the actual number is much higher. They are said to have embezzled about 10 billion yuan.
Combating graft has been a relentless task by the Chinese government since the country opened up in 1978, and it has always been keen to show that it is doing something about a problem which many argue has become worse in the last three decades.
The government tries to fight graft, or at least must appear to be trying. The public regularly lists corruption as the biggest problem facing the country, with a survey before March’s legislative sessions showing it to be the top concern, above the economic recession.
‘Fighting corruption here is like handing out speeding citations at a Formula One race: all one has to do is look around,’ said Beijing-based analyst Russell Leigh Moses, adding that graft is a useful means to attack opponents within the Chinese Communist Party.
The latest warning by the party came over the weekend, when the powerful Central Military Commission sent a surprisingly high-profile, and public, directive to senior military officers to curb corruption.
The last known case of military corruption was in 2006, when navy deputy commander Wang Shouye was sacked. But the People’s Liberation Army’s abuses are rarely made public.
‘No one has good statistics on the actual degree of corruption in the PLA,’ said international relations expert Li Mingjiang, referring to the insular and secretive PLA.
‘But most analysts would agree that it is indeed rampant and to a large degree corruption in the military is even more serious than that in the civilian sector,’ he said.
‘Although we are not sure about the whole situation and percentage, it has become a conventional wisdom that promotion at the low- and mid-ranking levels usually involves bribery.’
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