Two absconding corrupt Chinese officials have at last been sentenced to prison by a US court. However, it's almost impossible to bring them back to China and recover the illicit money because there is no extradition treaty between China and the US. To put an end to similar loss, authorities should learn a lesson from this and strengthen anti-corruption supervision, says an article in Shanghai Morning Post. Excerpts:

Xu Chaofan and Xu Guojun were sentenced to 22 and 25 years in prison respectively on May 6, after an eight-year refuge in the US. As the ex-managers of Bank of China's Kaiping branch in Guangdong province, they embezzled public money amounting to $482 million in 2001 and fled to the US. In the absence of an extradition treaty, they were not handed over to the Chinese justice department but sentenced by the US local court.

This reveals the difficulty in punishing absconding corrupt officials, who always choose the developed countries as their refuge. The developed countries are better positioned to decide in which way to provide judicial assistance. They often go by their own judicial tradition and put forward the three principles of "no capital punishment", "no political offender extradition" and "no double imputation punishment" as the premise of negotiations. However, the practice of frequent compromises, especially the concession of "no capital punishment", causes profound and lasting harm to the domestic legal system and erodes public confidence in the judicial departments.

Furthermore, the cost of international judicial cooperation is very high and it is difficult to transfer illicit money. Behind the developed countries' prerequisite of "humane" principles is their pursuit for economic interest. Rather than relying on judicial assistance, it is better to resort to domestic power to improve the legal system and strengthen law enforcement to prevent corrupt officials from escaping to foreign countries in the first place. The two Xus' case is nothing less than a purposeful lesson for us to tighten the domestic anti-corruption process.

(China Daily?May 11, 2009)