Beijing copes with shock from fall of Interpol chief

BEIJING — A year ago, the chief of Interpol, Meng Hongwei of China, watched as his country’s president, Xi Jinping, proudly told the organization that China would play a growing role in global law enforcement. China was among the safest countries in the world and “abided by international rules,” Xi told 1,000 delegates at Interpol’s general assembly in Beijing.

Now, Meng has fallen afoul of the opaque, highly politicized legal system that critics said should have disqualified him from appointment to Interpol in the first place. On Monday, China’s minister of public security, Zhao Kezhi, told a meeting of senior police officials in Beijing that Meng was accused of taking bribes and other crimes.

Neither Zhao nor the Foreign Ministry gave details of Meng’s supposed transgressions, or said whether they had taken place before or after his election as Interpol’s president in 2016.

In any case, Meng’s abrupt disappearance has left a cloud of uncertainty hanging over Chinese officials and the international bodies that are increasingly giving them leadership roles. It dealt a spectacular blow to China’s efforts to prove itself ready for more prominent roles in global affairs.

“Imagine if China were to somehow, someday, get a U.N. secretary-general, and then he too one day disappeared,” said Michael Caster, a human rights advocate in Bangkok who studies China’s legal system. “The brazenness with which China operates outside all concept or procedure of international norms is really concerning.”

The biggest question hanging around Meng’s fate is why Xi’s government approved the downfall of a man it had put forward to lead the organization, which coordinates law enforcement activities among 192 member countries.

Meng was charged by the National Supervisory Commission, an anticorruption body created to intensify the country’s campaign against graft. China’s courts and prosecutors answer to the Communist Party, and they rarely reject anti-corruption investigators’ findings. Meng’s detention is almost tantamount to a conviction.

Only after days of silence did China acknowledge that it was holding him and submit his resignation to Interpol.