Interpol chief disappears on trip
Wife has had no word since his return to China
PARIS • French authorities are investigating after the Chinese head of the international police agency Interpol appears to have vanished.
Meng Hongwei, 64, was reported missing by his wife, who told police Thursday night that she had not heard from him since he left on a trip to China last Saturday.
Police in Lyon, where Interpol is based, have launched an inquiry into what they called “a worrying disappearance.” Interpol has refused to clarify Meng’s whereabouts, saying the case is “a matter for the relevant authorities in both France and China.”
Meng, a vice-minister of China’s Ministry of Public Security, was elected to a fouryear term as president of Interpol, a global body that facilitates international police cooperation, in 2016.
He is the first Chinese national to hold the post and had been one of Beijing’s senior law enforcement officials, overseeing the country’s coast guard as well as international police cooperation. In recent months there have been signs that he has fallen out of favour with the ruling Communist party.
In April this year he was removed from the ministry’s powerful Communist Party committee. Earlier he reportedly missed a series of highlevel meetings, and stopped serving as director of the coast guard and deputy head of the state oceanic administration. It is not clear if he resigned from those posts or was fired.
Meng is likely to have worked closely with Zhou Yongkang, a former head of the Ministry of Public Security, who was expelled from the Communist Party in 2015 following convictions for corruption, bribery and leaking state secrets. He is serving a life sentence in prison.
Several high-ranking Chinese officials, wealthy businessmen and even celebrities have disappeared without explanation since Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, launched a sweeping anticorruption campaign after coming to power in 2012. About 1.5 million government officials have been punished for wrongdoing in the crackdown, which critics say is an excuse for President Xi to target political enemies.
“If Meng Hongwei has disappeared in China, then of course the most likely reason is an anti-corruption investigation,” Deng Yuwen, a former editor of a Communist Party journal who now writes commentaries on Chinese politics, said in an interview.
“Internationally, he is president of Interpol, but in the eyes of the Chinese authorities he is first of all Chinese, and they wouldn’t think too much about his international prominence,” Deng added. “This is the new normal. The anti-corruption investigations won’t go to the top echelons of the party leadership, but officials lower down the hierarchy — ministers, vice ministers — are still vulnerable.”
High-profile cases include that of Fan Bingbing, China’s highest paid actress, who disappeared in June amid reports she was being investigated for tax evasion. The rumour mill continued churning until this week, when she reappeared and was ordered to pay $70 million in back taxes and fines.
Fan had appeared in the Iron Man franchise and other big Hollywood spectacles.
Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported Friday that Meng was being held for questioning. It was not clear what, if any, charges have been levelled against him.
High-ranking party officials are generally subject to a disciplinary system that has no legal basis, said Sophie Richardson, the China director for Human Rights Watch. They can be detained indefinitely and kept out of public view while party leaders decide their punishment.
In March the authorities created a new agency, the National Supervision Commission, to act as the country’s highest ranking anti-corruption body.
Calls to the press office of China’s Ministry of Public Security in Beijing were unanswered.
While Meng’s global role at Interpol could have afforded him some political protection, human rights and legal advocates criticized his appointment over concerns Beijing would use his authority to silence and pursue dissidents abroad. In China, “nobody is safe — everybody has got to be looking over their shoulders thinking, ‘Are they coming for me next?’” Richardson said.
Interpol said it was “aware of media reports in connection with the alleged disappearance” of its president, but refused to confirm or deny rumours that Meng had been arrested in China.