China's top prosecutor body launches campaign to chase 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 ramps up its crackdown 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 and urged prosecutors to collaborate with other departments such as the police and courts to improve the system's efficiency. "The authority of law must be resolutely upheld and crimes must be strongly cracked down and deterred," said Xinhua, citing a statement issued after an SPP's conference on the campaign. The Ministry of Public Security in July launched a "fox hunt" to pursue economic fugitives, seen as the latest focus of Xi's far-reaching anti-corruption campaign. Extraditing 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 to hand over Chinese 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 economic fugitives, many of whom are corrupt officials or suspected of graft in China, were at large in the United States. [ID:nL4N0QH212] The SPP's campaign will focus on key targets and cases and will look to make full use of current multilateral and bilateral judicial agreements and treaties to conduct international cooperation, Xinhua said. It also urged Chinese prosecutors to strengthen their knowledge of foreign law to improve their ability to deal with suspects and illegal gains abroad. (Reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Michael Perry)