CRI听力:Second Wanted Economic Fugitive Returned to China

Another suspect on China's "100 most wanted economic fugitives" list has been repatriated from Singapore to China.

Analysts say the case is likely to set a precedent for future cases of repatriation and assets confiscation for criminals fleeing abroad.

CRI's Xie Cheng explains why.

"Running away to a foreign country is really a bad experience. I can't have any inner peace. I often wake up in the night, worrying about being captured by police. It's awful. I feel relieved to come back. I'll cooperate and confess to my crimes."

Li Huabo is the first on a recent list of 100 wanted economic fugitives to be repatriated from abroad.

A former local official in east China's Jiangxi Province, Li was suspected of embezzling 94 million yuan, around some 15 million US dollars.

He also funneled 29 million yuan through Singaporean banks before fleeing to the country in 2011.

In the following year, he was sentenced to 15 months behind bars by a Singaporean court for "dishonestly accepting stolen property" and then was repatriated after serving most of the sentence.

Media reports suggest that Chinese anti-graft officials were attending the trial as witness.
Besides coordinated law enforcement, China and Singapore have also been jointly working on the confiscation of Li's illegal assets.

Chinese anti-graft authorities have also begun to confiscate his illegal gains in abstention.
Huang Feng is the director of research institute of international crime law at Beijing Normal University.

He says the move is an uNPRecedented practice.

"Previous cases involving the seizure of illegal gains mainly direct at defendants who are dead. This is the first case to seize fugitives' illegal gains transferred overseas."

The money includes 5 million Singapore dollars in assets, which has already been frozen by the Singaporean government.

Meanwhile Singapore has already returned a total of 182,000 Singapore dollars of Li's assets directly to the county government that Li used to work for.

Huang Feng says it is highly possible that the all the money can be returned to China in the end.

"I think there's a high possibility for the Singaporean procuratorial organs to acknowledge China's decision, especially when Chinese officials initiated the confiscation procedure, they have fully considered the conditions and terms required by relevant Singaporean law"

The expert says if successful, it'll set a very meaningful precedent for the confiscation of illegal gains transferred overseas.

Without an official number, Chinese economic fugitives have been accused of transferring hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal gains overseas.

The confiscation of the transferred assets has been highlighted as a priority for the government's current anti-graft campaign.

For CRI, I'm Xie Cheng.