China’s most wanted fugitive arrested in the US

China’s most wanted fugitive, a government official accused of embezzling more than €36.5 million, has been detained by US immigration officers, the Communist Party’s anti-corruption agency said yesterday.

Yang Xiuzhu, who fled China in 2003, was detained after entering the US using a fake Dutch passport last year, according to the party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI).

The Chinese government has issued a list of 100 people it says are hiding overseas to avoid prosecution on corruption charges, and Ms Yang was top of the list.

Ms Yang used to run building projects in Wenzhou in the booming eastern province of Zhejiang in the 1990s, amassing a fortune big enough to buy a five-storey building in midtown Manhattan in 1996 for €4.5 million.

Local Chinese media called her the “Corrupt Queen”.

Escape

After

Interpol

issued a Red Corner Notice, an international arrest warrant requested by China, she was arrested in 2005, but escaped custody.

Luis Martinez, a spokesman for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, said in a statement that Ms Yang was an “enforcement priority”.

President Xi Jinping has waged a campaign against graft since he assumed control of the main offices of the party in late 2012. Since he made his pledge to root out graft in China, whether it involves massive wealth accumulated by the powerful "tigers" of the elite or backhanders palmed over to the "flies" at the bottom of the Communist Party, tens of thousands of officials have been arrested.

"The momentum of co-operation with the US is very good," Fu Kui, director of international co-operation at the CCDI, told the China Daily newspaper. "There has been some progress and examples of success and there is room for greater co-operation."

Ms Yang entered the United States by train from Canada and was caught last June after China provided the US with her passport information, according to the CCDI. She used a passport of a Chinese Dutch person, replacing the photo with her own.

By some estimates, about 18,000 Chinese officials have fled overseas in the past two decades. The illicit money taken by these officials exceeds 800 billion yuan (€118 billion), more than the annual revenue of the biggest telecommunication corporation of the nation, according a report of People’s Bank of China.

While many have fled to Europe, more have gone to Asia-Pacific nations, especially Canada, Australia and the United States, where there are large well-established Chinese communities.