On May 6th, the Las Vegas Federal Court sentenced Xu Chaofan and Xu Guojun to 25 and 22 years in prison, respectively, on charges of fraud, money laundering, embezzlement and document forgery. Xu Chaofan and Xu Guojun were the bank governors at the Kaiping branch of the Bank of China in Guangdong. Their wives, Kuang Wanfang and Yu Yingyi, also received sentences of eight years each on related charges. After years of pressure from the Chinese government and other developing nations, the US decided to hear cases of crimes committed by foreign nationals in other countries. This is the first time that the US court system has reached a verdict like this on a case involving Chinese nationals. Xu’s case also represents the first time a Chinese national has received such harsh sentence in another country’s court system.

Photo: sheloveu.com

In 2001, the Xinhua News Agency reported that China has over 4000 former officials suspected of crimes living abroad. It was estimated that these officials together had absconded with over 5 billion RMB in public funds. Last August, when the two Xus were charged with crimes, the California Police Department revealed that there were over 1000 Chinese living in the US to avoid prosecution for corruption.

There are several thousand government officials living abroad, but most of them are concentrated in Australia, Canada and the US. Many officials have also taken sanctuary in countries and regions, like Latin America and the Pacific island nations that have good relations with China and Taiwan. Other officials, who are only guilty of small-scale crimes, take refuge in countries like Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia and Mongolia because their low cost of living. There are also many officials hiding out in Africa, South America and Eastern European countries.

Xu Chaofan and Xu Guojun’s luxurious house in USA

The majority of corrupt officials have embezzled most of their fortune to America and have invested in the US economy in order to give the appearance that they are making contributions to society. This has led the US government to overlook their past crimes. Although several countries have issued all points bulletins for corrupt officials living abroad, the American government has avoided prosecution under the pretense that these officials suffer from political persecution in China. After 9/11, however, the US government re-evaluated its position on the prosecution of corrupt foreign officials. In January 2004, President Bush issued an executive order preventing anyone involved in corruption scandals from entering the United States. America also declared that it would retain a portion of the embezzled funds that it recovered for other countries because the process of tracking illegal wire transfers costs the government a considerable amount of money.

Fleeing officials now have to watch their steps more carefully in order to maintain their security abroad. Although they live lives of luxury, these officials are also afraid of being discovered. A Global Times reporter, following a lead his local friend had given him, went to a gambling parlor at eight in the morning in Las Vegas. There was only one gambler there, an old Chinese man surrounded by four waitresses. There were dozens of chips, each worth 500 US dollars, sitting on the table in front of the old man. The reporter’s friend told him that the old man was the former head of a Chinese state-owned enterprise who had embezzled a large sum of money. Now, afraid of returning to China, the old man’s life consisted simply of gambling every morning at eight.

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