‘Naked officials’ exposed as graft probe expands
Print Edition
CHINA’S anti-graft campaign is now targeting officials who have sent their spouses and children abroad, where they can create channels to potentially funnel illicit gains and establish footholds for eventual escape from the country.
Nearly 900, mostly mid-level, government officials in the southern province of Guangdong have been demoted or forced to resign or retire early after being identified as having spouses or offspring with permanent residency or citizenship overseas while they themselves continue to work on China’s mainland.
Because they remain without their families, they are known colloquially as “naked officials” — a term popular with the public because of its mocking tone.
It is the first time a provincial government has taken action against such officials.
The move signals a new approach in President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign that takes aim at a phenomenon in Chinese politics that has hindered the Party’s efforts to curb the flight of crooked officials.
Guangdong authorities said they found more than 1,000 such officials, of whom about a fifth had promised to try to get their families to return.
But the problem is not unique to Guangdong.
In 2012, Wang Guoqiang, the former Party boss of the northeastern Chinese city of Fengcheng, fled China to join his daughter in the United States. With him, Wang took his wife and a rumored 200 million yuan (US$30 million) in illicit funds, according to state media reports.
Months later, authorities in Liaoning Province said they had launched an investigation into Wang for accepting bribes and violating Party rules on traveling overseas. The Party’s discipline body fired Wang from the Party and his government posts. But he had already fled the country.
In a separate case, an investigation into Zhang Shuguang, the former deputy chief engineer of the now-defunct Railways Ministry in Beijing, found that his wife and daughter had emigrated to America where the family owned a large mansion in Los Angeles County. Zhang faces accusations of accepting 47.6 million yuan in bribes and is awaiting trial.
10 billion retrieved
Chinese authorities last year arrested 762 people suspected of work-related crimes who had been on the run and retrieved illegal gains worth 10 billion yuan, according to the Supreme People’s Procuratorate.
Some commentaries in Chinese media have said demotions or forced retirement may be too lenient a treatment for “naked officials,” and have urged full investigations into graft. Others noted that some officials’ children or spouses might have legitimate reasons to have overseas residency.
The Guangdong crackdown is a pilot project that likely will be rolled out to other parts of China, said Mao Zhaohui, head of the Anti-Graft Research Center at Beijing’s Renmin University.
In January, the Party issued regulations saying that “naked officials” would not be eligible for promotion. But critics noted enforcement depended on the officials’ own reporting of the status of their spouse and children.
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