The Communist Part of China’s crackdown on corrupt officials has created a wave of economic fugitives, who are fleeing China to escape trial. The Ministry of Public issued the photos of alleged economic fugitives from China, many of whom are thought to be in Australia.
The Chinese diaspora is widespread. Since President Xi Jinping began his campaign to root out corruption from the Chinese Communist Party, stories of alleged financial criminals fleeing China to live with relatives in other countries have cropped up in the media. Last year, the focus was the US, thought to be a safe haven from extradition. Now the focus is Australia, another country which has an extradition treaty with China, but which has yet to ratify it.
In March this year, China reportedly gave the US a list of allegedly corrupt officials, thought to be in the US and asked for help in tracking them down. The Chinese government launched Operation Foxhunt in summer 2014, in a bid to track down suspects on-the-run beyond China’s borders.
Back in February 2014, Financial Crime Asia reported on the expected surge of fugitives to Australia. Canada had apparently been the migrant’s destination of choice, until it scrapped an investment immigration programme for Chinese citizens after noticing a marked increase in the number of applications by wealthy Chinese Mainlanders.
In 2013, China’s anti-corruption body, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, investigated 51,000 people for corruption, bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power. It claimed a total of 30,420 officials were punished for violating new party rules aimed at avoiding pomp and ceremony, according to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald.
How to spot an economic fugitive
Government officials are politically exposed persons and, thereby, subject to enhanced due diligence measures by banks and other regulated institutions in Australia, Canada and other jurisdictions. Whether the alleged criminals will be subject to extradition or not for the crimes they may or may not have committed, their inclusion on the ‘wanted list’ is enough to merit further enquiries by financial institutions. The photo gallery above presumably gives the names of the officials in Pinyin. Any list monitoring software worth its salt will be able to translate the names into the Latin alphabet and should be able to identify whether any of the names above correspond to accounts held at a financial institution.
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