Hunt nabs 589 fugitive suspects in 3 months
China brought back 589 fugitives from overseas in the past three months as intensified efforts were made to hunt down those suspected of taking bribes and engaging in wrongdoing in State-owned enterprises and the financial industry, the country’s leading anti-graft watchdog said on Friday.
This year’s global anti-corruption manhunt operation, code-named “Sky Net 2020”, was launched in April. As of June 30, it had returned 589 people suspected of duty-related crimes, according to information posted online by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China and the National Supervisory Commission.
Of those, 152 were Party members and government officials, the commissions said.
In June, for example, Hai Tao, 60, a fugitive bribery suspect who worked for the now-defunct Ministry of Railways and was also listed on an Interpol Red Notice, returned to China to turn himself in after fleeing overseas seven years ago.
Hai’s surrender was a sign of an important achievement in the country’s continued manhunt for duty-related crime suspects as years of operations have greatly impeded fugitives, said Song Wei, director of the clean governance research center at the University of Science and Technology Beijing.
Meanwhile, fugitives suspected of offering bribes to officials were also major targets of this year’s campaign, the commissions said.
On May 18, Qian Jianfen, former legal representative of Wuxi Ronghai investment consulting company in Jiangsu province, who had fled abroad in July 2019, returned and turned herself in. She was accused of bribing justice department officials from May 2013 to November 2014, after those officials offered “help” for her company in a bankruptcy case.
A month after Qian’s return, Zhang Jihua, former legal representative of Shuanghua Pharmaceutical in Shandong province, who fled overseas after allegations of giving bribes to officials of State-owned enterprises, also came back and surrendered.
The return of two former executives of the companies “not only shows our country’s determination and strength in fighting crimes of giving bribes, but also contributes to investigating and collecting evidence on those accepting the bribes,” said Zhang Lei, a professor at the Center of Criminal Law with Beijing Normal University.
In late April, Hu Yipin, a fugitive suspected of loan fraud, was repatriated from Vietnam to China. A month later, Qiang Tao and Li Jiandong, two fugitives suspected of stealing large amounts of company property, were brought back from Myanmar after being arrested there.
All three had been listed on an Interpol Red Notice in March after they fled China. Before their escape, Hu had been the head of a bank subbranch in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, and the other two worked for a State-owned railway.
Strengthening enforcement in finance and State-owned enterprise sectors helps ensure the healthy development of industries and safeguards financial security, according to the Central Anti-corruption Coordination Group’s office for repatriating fugitives.