China campaign targets economic fugitives - Xinhua

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's top prosecuting body has launched a six-month campaign targeting corruption suspects, especially those who have fled overseas, as Xi Jinping's government cracks down on graft, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday. The Supreme People's Protectorate (SPP) said it would use China's confiscation rules more vigorously to prevent corrupt officials from benefiting from their gains. It urged prosecutors to collaborate with other departments such as the police and courts to improve the system's efficiency. "China will never let corrupt officials escape punishment of the law," Qiu Xueqiang, the SPP's deputy procurator-general, was quoted by Xinhua as saying. Qiu said prosecutors should bolster efforts to prevent such officials from leaving the country. The Ministry of Public Security (MPS) in July launched a "fox hunt" to pursue economic fugitives. The MPS on Saturday announced on its website that it had located 102 suspects of economic crimes who had fled abroad and had arrested 61, four whom it escorted from Thailand to Beijing on the same day. Bringing economic fugitives back to China is seen as a tricky task as there is no extradition treaty between China and the United States and foreign governments have expressed reluctance at handing over such suspects for fear that they could face the death penalty in China. In August, a senior official from the public security ministry was cited by state media as saying that 150 Chinese economic fugitives were at large in the United States. (Reporting by Brenda Goh; editing by Michael Perry and Jason Neely)