Top name on China's Sky Net fugitives list is in US custody
Fugitive may be sent back to China due to visa violation but wider extradition treaty is unlikely
PUBLISHED : Saturday, 30 May, 2015, 1:27am
UPDATED : Saturday, 30 May, 2015, 1:27am
Andrea Chen [email protected]
Yang Xiuzhu is being held at the Hudson County Correctional Centre. Photo: Reuters
Beijing has claimed another trophy in its hunt for fugitive officials abroad following the detention of a corruption suspect in the US, but observers say repatriating officials hiding in the US to China remains an uphill task.
The chance for the two countries to start negotiations on extradition treaties, which tops Beijing wish list, is also slim.
Yang Xiuzhu, a senior official accused of embezzling more than 250 million yuan (HK$316 million) when she oversaw construction projects in Zhejiang, was in US custody pending her removal to China, US immigration said on Thursday.
China's top anti-graft agency told China Daily that Yang was detained last year after entering the US from Canada using a fake Dutch passport.
She had violated the terms of the US Visa Waiver Programme that allows some citizens from certain countries to temporarily stay in the United States, and was being held at a detention facility in Hudson County, New Jersey, a US immigration agency spokesman said.
The name of the 68-year-old appears at the top of a list of 100 wanted fugitives released by Interpol's China office in April as a part of Operation Sky Net.
China says 40 suspects on the list are believed to be in the US.
But observers said there was little chance for China and the US to formalise an extradition agreement in the short term.
"It's almost impossible for the two countries to sign an extradition treaty during President Xi Jinping's state visit to the US in September," said Professor Jie Dalei, from Peking University's international relations school. "The gap between the two legal systems is too wide for them to work out a bilateral treaty that meets both standards."
Dr Li Mingjiang from Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said the judicial circle in the US had little trust in the mainland legal system, which is frequently criticised by overseas rights groups.
"Washington would put itself under huge pressure from public opinion if it opened talks with China on an extradition treaty," said the China studies expert.
China could not use mechanisms such as the United Nations Convention against Corruption or international treaties to demand extradition, because the US adopted a "bilateral-treaty-based approach", said Huang Feng, head of the Institute for International Criminal Law at Beijing Normal University.
Without such a treaty, Washington has limited legal means of helping to repatriate fugitives to Beijing, though it can help in cases where there have been visa violations, such as Yang's.
Beijing faces a similar situation in the Netherlands, one of several European countries that does not have an extradition agreement with China.
Yang was detained a decade ago in Amsterdam, but managed to slip away because China was not able to gain custody of her.
The analysts said China and the US would continue to negotiate on a case-by-case basis.
"Beijing is likely to seek Washington's understanding and cooperation on several specific cases," Jie said.
But Shi Yinghong, a US studies expert from Renmin University, warned that such cooperation was unlikely to include the most sensitive cases or Beijing's most wanted fugitives.
"State and military secrets are often involved in those cases, and there is almost zero chance for extradition," Shi said. "That's also why a bilateral treaty that would be applied to all extradition cases could hardly be signed."
Additional reporting by Reuters
