‘Most wanted’ held after 13 years
Print Edition
CHINA’S most-wanted corruption fugitive was arrested yesterday on her return from the United States.
Yang Xiuzhu arrived in Beijing after 13 years on the run in countries across Asia, Europe and North America.
A former vice mayor of Wenzhou in east China’s Zhejiang Province, and a former deputy director of the province’s construction department, Yang, 70, was wanted for allegedly embezzling more than US$40 million. She was top of a list of 100 most-wanted suspects who Beijing had asked Interpol to help apprehend.
Yang was taken into custody after being led off a plane by two female police officers. After passing through immigration, she was led to a room where the charges against her were read out by a prosecutor and she signed a charge sheet.
The entire process was broadcast live on China Central Television.
CCTV showed images of a bespectacled Yang, dressed in a grey padded jacket and dark trousers, being led from the American Airlines aircraft and going through immigration under escort.
“We are all Chinese, our home is China,” Yang said on television, urging other corruption suspects to also give themselves up. “Please come back soon,” she said
The Party’s anti-corruption watchdog says it has taken custody of 37 of the 100 most-wanted graft suspects since launching its “Sky Net” campaign in April 2015.
They include Yang and her brother, businessman Yang Jinjun, who is suspected of graft and bribery and who returned to China late last year.
With Chinese investigators closing in, Yang Xiuzhu fled first to Hong Kong in 2003, then Singapore, France, the Netherlands and Italy, according to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
She had applied for asylum in France and the Netherlands, but was rejected by both before fleeing to the US to seek asylum in May 2014.
The US is a major destination for Chinese officials and economic fugitives accused of corruption.
The commission said that authorities used law enforcement and diplomatic efforts to keep up the pressure on Yang, and also assured her that she would receive relatively lenient treatment if she turned herself in.
Eventually, she withdrew her asylum application and returned to China.
“Yang Xiuzhu decided to turn herself in from initially saying ‘if I’m going to die I’ll die in the US,” to ‘thinking of coming home,’ and at last her withdrawing her asylum application,” it said.
Media reports said Yang was in declining health and hoped for better medical care in China.
The US and China have no extradition treaty so officials requested her return through the US-China Joint Liaison Group on law enforcement cooperation, providing evidence that aided in her detention in late 2014, and the freezing of her assets, the commission said.
The return of Yang is “a major achievement” in China-US law enforcement cooperation, foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said yesterday. He told a press briefing: “China appreciates the assistance of the United States and all other countries involved in the process.”
Geng said such cooperation showed that corruption is the common enemy of the international community, a community that agrees on a “zero tolerance, zero loopholes and zero barrier” approach to anti-corruption law enforcement.
“China will continue to cooperate with countries to bring back corrupt fugitives,” he said.
US and Chinese diplomats and law enforcement representatives plan to meet in Beijing next week to discuss fighting transnational crime through the Joint Liaison Group.
China has also stepped up international law enforcement cooperation to combat possible terrorist threats and fraudsters who target Chinese citizens through the Internet and on mobile phones from countries as far afield as Tanzania and Armenia.
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