Former fugitive banker pleads guilty to crimes
Beijing’s successful Winter Olympics bid reignites passion in former would-be hockey pros
Xu Chaofan, one of China’s most wanted fugitives who hid overseas for 17 years, pleaded guilty on Thursday to embezzlement and misappropriating public funds, the Jiangmen Intermediate People’s Court in Guangdong province said.
In collusion with two others, Xu, former head of the Kaiping branch of Bank of China in Guangdong, had embezzled $622 million and HK$129 million ($16.6 million), beginning in 1993, the court said in a statement.
He also misappropriated 356 million yuan ($55.2 million), HK$20 million and $124 million in public funds, it added.
Xu, now in his late 50s, fled to the United States in 2001 and was repatriated from the US in July 2018 thanks to anti-corruption law enforcement cooperation between China and the US.
Two billion yuan was recovered upon his repatriation.
Xu was the first fugitive repatriated from abroad following the establishment of the National Supervisory Commission in March 2018, the Communist Party of China’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said.
Xu pleaded guilty in court. His sentence will be announced later.
More than 20 people, including members of Xu’s family, deputies to the National People’s Congress, political advisers and journalists, attended the hearing.
Xu was named one of the 100 most wanted Chinese graft fugitives subject to Interpol Red Notices in a list released in April 2015.
Sixty had been repatriated by early last year.
It’s common to watch players vie for control of the puck while swiftly skating across the ice during hockey games. Those who go to the Beijing 1979 team’s regular matches, held twice a week, might not notice anything different.
In fact, the players glide on the ice so effortlessly, one can hardly tell that most of them skating on the rink are age 60 and older.
Most of the team is made up of students who attended the Beijing Shichahai Sports School’s hockey classes in the 1970s. The classes were created to train young candidates for both the city’s and the country’s teams.
However, the classes were closed in 1979, ending most of the students’ dreams of becoming professional players.
After Beijing’s successful bid for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in 2015, Chinese residents started participating in all kinds of winter sport events in the capital, and more rinks began operating in the city.
A group of students from those 1970s classes got inspired.
In 2015, nine of those students gathered on the rink in the Wukesong Ice Sports Center and started practicing. Gradually, more of their fellow alumni joined them.
They decided to establish a team and name it “1979”.
Now, the team has 40 members with an average age of 60. Every Wednesday and Saturday, they break up into teams and play against each other at the Aozhong Ice Sports Center in northeastern Beijing, celebrating their passion for hockey.