To curb out-flowing of corruption officials who abscond with public funds abroad for evasion of punishment, China's top legislature Thursday ratified the UN's Convention Against Corruption in a unanimous vote.

"The unanimous vote demonstrates the strong determination of the top lawmaking body to stamp out the prevailing corruption in collaboration with the international community," said Li Mingyu, member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress.

With the approval vote by 157 member of the Standing Committee, China will become one of the first group of more than 30 countries to enforce the international law, which will go into effect on December 14 this year.

The convention "is conducive to the repatriation of corrupt criminals fleeing abroad and the recovery of Chinese assets illegally transferred to foreign lands," Premier Wen Jiabao said in a bill submitted to the legislature on Saturday.

Chinese police authorities said that by the end of last year, more than 500 Chinese suspects of economic crimes, mostly corrupt officials or executives of state-owned companies, were at large in foreign countries. They stole away with them a total of 70 billion yuan (US$8.4 billion) of public funds, and only a fraction of them have been extradited back to China.

The UN anti-corruption convention, adopted by the UN General Assembly in October 31, 2003, stipulates on the prevention, criminalization, international cooperation, assets recovery and implementation mechanism in the fight against transnational crimes of corruption.

China signed the document in December in 2003. By September 15, 30 countries have ratified the convention, which will goes into effect on December 14 this year.

The convention is consistent with China's anti-corruption strategy of putting equal emphasis on punishment and prevention of such a crime and has no contradictions with Chinese domestic laws in this regard, said Wu Dawei, vice minister of foreign affairs,.

"Most importantly, it will provide a strong international legal basis for China to overcome the difficulties in investigating, extraditing criminal suspects of corruption and recovering Chinese assets in foreign countries," Wu said.

China has been active in seeking international cooperation in fighting against corruption. Chinese prosecutors have captured a total of about 70 criminal suspects of corruption from abroad through legal assistance channels with foreign countries since 1998.

The successful extradition from the US of a local branch head of the Bank of China in Guangdong Province in 2004 was lauded as the most powerful deterrence for Chinese corrupt officials, since the country used to be taken as the safest destination to escape from punishment. Yu Zhendong, the banker, misappropriated 483 million US dollars before fleeing to the US.

Chinese police have also seized more than 230 Chinese criminal suspects from more than 30 countries and regions during the period of 1993 to January this year with the help of Interpol, the international police body.

Fan Xin, another lawmaker, told Xinhua that China should go on right now with the formulation or revision of its laws, including criminal code, statutes on money laundry and bribery in private sectors, to better adapt Chinese legal system to the UN anti-corruption convention.

(Xinhua News Agency October 28, 2005)