Senior US officials are to meet in August with their Chinese counterparts to discuss the possibility of repatriating former Chinese officials who have fled to the US with billions of dollars of allegedly stolen government assets, according to a US Department of State official.
The issue is a thorny one, as no extradition treaty exists between the US and China. That has made the US, and other countries such as Australia and Canada, attractive destinations for Chinese officials fleeing the country and a haven for the assets they have allegedly stolen.
Western governments have long been reluctant to hand over suspects because of a lack of transparency and due process in China’s judicial system.
International human rights groups say torture is used as a tool for extracting confessions in Chinese interrogations.
Government officials convicted of corruption have been sentenced to death.
Officials from both countries met for two days in the Philippines last month, with the US delegation led by US State Department Senior Director for National Security and Diplomacy David Luna.
Luna confirmed to reporters that he attended the meetings and said talks will reconvene in August and will include law enforcement and legal experts. The countries will share specific intelligence on allegedly corrupt Chinese officials and stolen assets and will also discuss potential ways to send the fugitives back to China, Luna said.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined immediate comment, as did the Chinese Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Chinese Communist Party’s anti-corruption body.
Alternatives to extradition exist, US officials say, including deportation for violations of US immigration law.
Canada, which has no formal extradition treaty with China, has recently expelled suspects wanted by Beijing, including Lai Changxing (賴昌星). Lai, a businessman wanted for corruption, was sent back to China in 2011 on the promise that he would not be executed. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Last year, Chinese officials said more than 150 “economic fugitives,” many of them described as corrupt government officials, were in the US.
Neither country has publicly provided a figure for how much stolen money has been smuggled out of China and into the US.
However, the Washington-based Global Financial Integrity group, which tracks illegal outflows from countries, estimates that between 2003 and 2012, US$1.25 trillion of illicit cash left China. Some of that moves around the world through dummy bank accounts and other means, and once in the US, it is often invested in real estate, making its original source hard to trace.
The preliminary talks between US and Chinese officials were held on Jan. 27 and 28 in Clark, Philippines, as part of an APEC international working group, called ACT-NET. The group, which involves multiple APEC countries, including Russia, was formed in Beijing in August last year to fight cross-border corruption.
The talks took place amid an intensifying and far-reaching anti-corruption drive in China by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), and a ramping up of efforts between the US and China, including the sharing of criminal intelligence, to crack down on corruption.
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