Beijing - China's difficulties in bringing
home graft suspects who fled abroad have prompted tighter
measures against illegal moves of capital and people beyond its
borders, the government said on Friday.
China has sought to build international cooperation in its
hunts for corrupt officials overseas, after President Xi Jinping
launched a war on graft about four years ago.
But some Western nations have been reluctant to send people
back to a country where rights groups say mistreatment of
criminal suspects remains a problem, and they also say China is
unwilling to furnish proof of the crimes.
The People's Bank of China and the Public Security Ministry
have cracked down on the use of offshore companies and
underground transfers of capital this year, the Central
Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said.
"Preventing one person from fleeing abroad is to a certain
degree the same as recovering one, so we must unceasingly
increase efforts to prevent escape," said Liu Jianchao, head of
the graft agency's international cooperation bureau.
At the same time as weaving a web overseas, 'Sky Net' must
build a dam to keep individuals from moving overseas, the agency
said on its website.
It was referring to a programme dating from 2014 that has
drawn on the resources of several Chinese agencies to track and
repatriate corrupt officials and their plunder.
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Fewer suspects left China in 2016 than last year, when
returning suspects for the first time exceeded those who left,
the agency said, but gave no figures.
Bringing home the plunder was "very difficult," Huang
Shuxian, deputy head of the agency, said in April.
The operation has recovered 2.3 billion yuan ($333 million)
in the first eleven months of this year, or less than a third of
total recoveries of 85.4 billion yuan ($12.4 billion) since
2014, the agency said.
China tracks capital outflows closely and regularly steps up
measures to restrain abnormal flows. Last month, the central
bank vowed to tighten checks against money laundering in
Shanghai's free trade zone.
The anti-graft body also joined hands with three ministries
this year to stamp out use of illegal documents during
emigration, it added.