Co-operation urged on transnational corruption
By Liu Li (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-09-06 06:19

International judicial co-operation was appealed for yesterday at the 22nd Congress on the Law of the World, in an attempt to deal with transnational corruption-related crimes.

"Corrupt officials always make use of the barrier of criminal jurisdiction among different countries to flee to abroad, or they remit embezzled money overseas," Zhang Zhihui, director of the Prosecutorial Theory Institute under the Supreme People's Procuratorate, said yesterday during a panel session of the congress.

The congress opened yesterday in Beijing and will move to Shanghai tomorrow for another two-day session.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Commerce, some 4,000 corrupt Chinese officials have fled overseas in recent years carrying illegal funds of US$50 billion with them. Few of them have been repatriated.

"A country's efforts against corruption will hardly succeed without assistance from other relevant countries," Zhang said yesterday.

As a result, to draft international treaties on prevention and cure of corruption and establish an international judicial co-operation system is necessary and urgent, according to the researcher.

He urged China to sign bilateral or multilateral extradition treaties and judicial assistance treaties with relevant countries.

Furthermore, a prevention system should be established in the country to prevent corruption-related criminals from fleeing overseas or transferring illegal incomes to foreign countries.

Zhang's views were echoed by Wang Jianming, director of the Anti-Corruption Bureau under the Supreme People's Procuratorate, in his paper submitted to the congress.

"Mutual trust should be further established globally to enhance the co-operation level to fight against and prevent multinational corruption," he said.

"Detailed measures to implement the United Nations Anti-Corruption Convention should be fixed internationally," Wang said.

Over 100 countries including China passed the convention, which was adopted by the United Nations Assembly in 2003.

Yu Zhendong, former president of the Kaiping Branch of the Bank of China was on trial last month at a grassroots court in South China's Guangdong Province.

He was the first corrupt official to be extradited from overseas after China's agreement to the convention.

During a panel session yesterday at the congress, Qin Zheng'an, president of the Beijing High People's Court vowed to adopt various measures to deal with the "accusation explosion" in the capital city.

(China Daily 09/06/2005 page2)