China to name corrupt fugitives who fled overseas
Identities of corrupt officials to be made public at appropriate time, state media says, as anti-graft agency turns to provinces for help
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 16 December, 2014, 10:57pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 17 December, 2014, 9:25am
Keira Lu Huang [email protected]
Yu Zhendong, a former Bank of China branch manager in Guangdong, embezzled about 4 billion yuan before fleeing overseas. He was repatriated in 2004 and later sentenced to 12 years in jail. Photo: AP
The mainland will make public at an appropriate time the names of fugitives who have fled overseas, the People's Daily said yesterday.
The national graft-busting agency had set up an office to track down the suspected criminals and their assets overseas, but the investigations needed assistance at the local level, the Communist Party's mouthpiece added.
"The office will put more focus on major cases and those on the significant-case list, but in the end, we need local power to bring them back," the Daily cited an anonymous official at the office as saying.
The office would hand over some responsibility for investigating the cases to the party committee in the province where the official departed from the country.
"In the near future, there will be more and more corrupt officials coming back and placed under legal sanctions," the Daily said.
Operation Fox Hunt was launched in July, and 428 suspects had been apprehended so far, Xinhua reported the Ministry of Security as saying earlier this month.
Among those Beijing is seeking are several well-known former senior executives of state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
The party's graft-busters, the Central Committee for Discipline Inspection, would continue to strengthen measures to root out corruption at SOEs, a senior official at the agency said.
Hao Mingjin, deputy head of the supervision division, said the agency had dedicated some staff to monitoring 54 SOEs controlled by the central government.
The staff would deal directly with state asset regulators and the State Council, the anti-graft agency said on its website yesterday. Hao said corruption in the SOE sector was tied to bidding and mergers, and other investment deals.
Some senior executives had taken advantage of their power to help families and relatives with business in related areas, creating what was being called family corruption.
Top executives of the major state-owned enterprises are directly appointed by the party's Organisation Department.
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences also published its annual "blue book" on corruption and the government's efforts to root it out.
"Over 90 per cent of cadres are confident about the anti-corruption campaign in the future," China News Service said in a report on the publication of the book.
The blue book highlighted a growing problem of civil service employees ignoring their job duties in an effort to maintain a low-profile and stay off the radar of graft inspectors. But the campaign would continue unabated, it said.
The academy began publishing the book on anti-corruption in 2011.
