China’s most-wanted fugitive, an official accused of embezzling more than US$40 million, is in US custody, according to the Chinese Communist Party’s anti-graft agency.
Yang Xiuzhu (楊秀珠), who fled China in 2003, was detained after entering the US using a fake Dutch passport last year, according to the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI).
In the first confirmation of Yang’s whereabouts in a decade, the commission’s International Cooperation Department said she escaped from detention in the Netherlands in May last year — after being rejected for political asylum and before she could be sent back to China.
A person going by the same name and born in the same year is in custody at the Hudson County correctional facility in New Jersey, according to a database maintained by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
“The momentum of cooperation with the US is very good,” Fu Kui (傅奎), director of international cooperation at the CCDI, said in an interview in Beijing on Wednesday, in which he discussed China’s campaigns to track and return suspects. “There has been some progress and examples of success and there is room for greater cooperation.”
Repatriating former officials who have absconded is a key cog of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) fight against corruption, which he has called a “life and death” matter for the party and the country.
A former deputy mayor of the coastal city of Wenzhou, Yang, 68, was ranked No. 1 on a list of 100 people China says are hiding abroad to avoid prosecution for graft.
Catching these fugitives “is a key aspect of the anti-corruption campaign,” Fu said. “If we leave an escape here, we won’t be able to deter officials who think they can get away with corruption.”
Yang entered the US by train from Canada and was caught in June last year after China provided the US with her passport information, according to the CCDI.
She used a passport of another Chinese Dutch person and replaced the photograph with her own.
Yang is in US custody “pending removal to China for violating the terms of the Visa Waiver Program,” ICE spokesman Lou Martinez said in a statement. “As a foreign law enforcement fugitive, Yang is an ICE enforcement priority.”
Fu’s department last year began coordinating China’s efforts to find and bring back suspects from overseas. That campaign was dubbed Operation Sky Net in March, followed a month later by the release of the list of 100. The campaign includes Fox Hunt, an operation by the Chinese Ministry of Public Security to bring back suspects in economic crimes.
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