Following the 2004 extradition from the United States of Yu Zhendong, a corrupt banker, China will continue to strengthen international law enforcement cooperation to ensure crooked officials who've fled overseas are brought to justice, a top official with the Supreme People's Procuratorate vowed yesterday.

The United Nations Convention Against Corruption and world organizations like the International Association of Anti-Corruption Authorities (IAACA) and the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering support cooperation between China and other countries, Deputy Procurator-General Wang Zhenchuan said yesterday on the sidelines of the ongoing general meeting of the IAACA which closes today.

The theme of the five-day event being held in Beijing is "International Cooperation for the Effective Implementation of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption." A key objective of the meeting, in addition to adopting the IAACA's constitution and electing its Executive Committee, includes formulating a development plan for the organization on the basis of a comprehensive debate focused on the best methods of international cooperation to fight corruption.

Edward Nucci, the acting head of the Public Integrity Section of the US Department of Justice, told China Daily yesterday that although there was no bilateral extradition treaty between the two countries the UN convention allowed for the repatriation of fugitive Chinese officials found guilty of corruption.

The Guangdong Jiangmen Intermediate People's Court sentenced Yu, former head of the Kaiping city branch of the Bank of China, one of the country's four biggest state-owned commercial banks, to 12 years in prison and ordered confiscation of one million yuan (US$125,000) for graft and embezzlement of public funds.

Two former chiefs of the Kaiping city branch of the Bank of China, Xu Chaofan and Xu Guojun as well as their family members, were charged with embezzling US$485 million and laundering it in Las Vegas with Yu's help. They're currently being tried at a court in Nevada.

More than 70 corrupt officials have been arrested overseas in recent years. China has signed 81 criminal and civil judicial assistance treaties with 51 countries and has extradition treaties with 26 countries.

"Conducting overseas arrests and extraditions accords with the developing trend of international criminal judicial cooperation," said Wang. "Extradition was a major topic at the meeting."?

But despite the Procuratorate's efforts many developed western countries have not signed extradition treaties with China.

Meanwhile it has emerged in Shanghai that two senior officials responsible for managing the city's state-owned assets may have been involved in the pension fund corruption scandal which brought down Shanghai's Party chief Chen Liangyu along with many other officials and businessmen.

A municipal government spokesperson said yesterday that Ling Baoheng, director of Shanghai's State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission and deputy director Wu Hongmei are "assisting the investigation" into the scandal. The spokesperson did not elaborate.

Their names were removed yesterday from a list of the Commission leaders on its official website. No new directors have yet been nominated.

At the end of 2005 the Commission, which has overseen several major projects including the city's Formula One race track, managed state-owned assets of approximately 730 billion yuan (US$91 billion).

(China Daily, CIR October 25, 2006)