国内英语新闻:China's gov't says fleeing criminal suspects will be brought to book

BEIJING, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) -- China will continue to strengthen international judicial cooperation with other countries, including the United States, a spokesperson for China's Ministry of Justice said.

    The unnamed spokesperson made the statement while commenting on the case of two former Bank of China (BOC) managers in southern Guangdong Province, who were convicted in a U.S. court last year of embezzlement and money laundering, the Legal Daily reported Friday.

    "China welcomed the verdict by the U.S. court," which sentenced Xu Chaofan and Xu Guojun, two former managers of the BOC Guangdong Kaiping Branch, and their wives, to prison terms of eight to 25 years, the spokesperson said.

    Xu Chaofan was sentenced to 25 years in jail and Xu Guojun to 22 years. Their wives were each sentenced to eight years in prison. All four were further sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay 482 million U.S. dollars in restitution.

    The four were found guilty of a racketeering conspiracy that began in 1991 and continued until October 2004.

    Prosecutors said the defendants laundered stolen money through Hong Kong, Canada and the U.S., including 3 million U.S. dollars deposited at several Las Vegas casinos.

    The case was one of the biggest of its kind since the founding of New China in 1949.

    It has, however, reinforced the positive development of Sino-U.S. judicial cooperation and provided experience in dealing with organized economic crime.

    "Fleeing suspects are doomed to be punished by law," said the spokesperson.

    International judicial cooperation, an effective way of fighting crime, would contribute to the crackdown on trans-national crimes, he said.

    Professor Huang Feng of the Beijing Normal University's Criminal Law Research Institute said Xu's sentencing in the U.S. provided "an alternative to extradition" as the two countries had not signed an extradition treaty.

    Fleeing suspects could still be convicted abroad, though they currently could not be repatriated, Huang said.

    Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in May the two guilty couples should be repatriated or extradited to China as soon as possible.