What are the difficulties in arresting the corrupt officials overseas?
According to the media reports, one of the important achievements of the APEC Conference is the adoption of anti-corruption declaration, after which APEC members will carry out crossover cooperation in public corruption, commercial bribery, money laundering, illegal trade, etc.
In fact, anti-corruption has become a subject of international institutions for nearly 20 years. Since 1996, the World Bank has launched over 600 anti-corruption programs in about 100 countries. And the APEC is also involved in anti-corruption issues more than ten years ago, and even set up a working team and enhancing communication.
But what should be pointed out is that the anti-corruption cooperation of APEC is different from the understanding of the general public. Starting from creating a fair and transparent social environment for international trade and investment, the APEC anti-corruption requires the host country to be more transparent and reasonable in clarity of policies and regulations, some approvals and foreign investment management to FDI.
However, in China’s case, to discuss anti-corruption issue in international organization, it might focus on strengthening cooperation with other counties, hoping them to deny safe haven to those engaged in corruption. Currently, China is beginning an unprecedented fight against corruption. Previously, a large amount of officials escaped to foreign countries. It might be an important background for China attaching great importance to discussing anti-corruption under APEC frame as to how to arrest these corrupt officials home and recover related corruption money.
The Global Financial Integrity of the United States published a report last year that there were nearly 20,000 Chinese corrupt officials who have fled overseas from 2002 to 2011 with illegal capital outflow of more than 1 trillion dollars. Then, how many of them have been arrested home a? Although the authority hasn’t published the real data till now, the media often cites a datum: from 1998 to April 2008, only over 300 suspects have successfully arrested.
So, what are the difficulties to arrest these corrupt officials?
The most important point is that China and many countries lack extradition agreements for the time being. According to the introduction of the Foreign Ministry recently, China has concluded agreements on judicial aid, extradition and transfer of sentenced persons, etc. with 63 countries till September of this year. However, it should be pointed out that China hasn’t concluded such agreement with America, Canada, Australia and other major powers which are the main destinations for these corrupt officials currently.
From the perspective of law, legal barrier is a very important reason for these countries to be the haven of corrupt officials. Because, according to the convention of current international law, “prisoner under sentence of death” is not to be extradited, i.e., there is possibility that the criminal will be sentenced to death once being extradited. As a result, the suspect cannot be extradited. While according to Chinese laws, criminals with particularly severe corruption will be sentenced to death penalty. It is just this provision that has caused divergence between China and European and American on issue of extradition. Lacking of a package of extradition agreements, there are great difficulties to arrest corrupt officials overseas. And the cost on one-to-one negotiation to solve corrupt official problem is too expensive.
What is predictable is that death penalty on crime of corruption will not be abolished within a long period of time. Then, why is the number of arrested corrupt officials overseas released by the media on rise in recent years? Especially since 2014, the pursuit of corrupt officials abroad has been raised to an unprecedented level. For example, China has arrested 288 suspects accused of financial crimes across 56 countries as part of its sweeping “Operation Fox Hunt,” which aims to nab corrupt officials abroad. However, the most important reason for why we can win the support from countries without signing bilateral extradition agreements is the economic incentive. Countries helping China to arrest the corrupt officials can enjoy huge sum of money according to proportion. They can get 40% or 50% of the illicit money, or even as high as 80%.
However, such a high proportion might not be fair, because the United Nations Convention against Corruption entering into force in 2005 regulates that all signing countries have the obligation to make a contribution for “international fight against corruption” and pursue illicit assets through joint cooperation; What is especially important is that this Convention has established the principle of “corrupt public money must be returned”.
In consideration of the fact that the most important countries having economic and trade exchange with China all belong to APEC and most of them are members of the United Nations and have signed the United Nations Convention against Corruption, it will facilitate the cooperation between China and various countries in related fields to release Anti-Corruption Declaration and establish collaborating institutions. What’s more important is that we have expressed China’s anti-corruption determination to the leaders of all countries in form of declaration, which will be conducive to the establishment of mutual collaboration mechanism among different countries. It should be known that corruption and hunting for corrupt officials overseas is not just a problem of China but of many developing countries.
Published in China Times | 2014-11-7
