A suspect on a list of 100 most-wanted Chinese fugitives who had fled abroad was repatriated from the U.S. to China on Friday, marking the first person on the list to have fled to the U.S. has been successfully repatriated.
Yang Jinjun, former general manager of a company called Minghe Group in Wenzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province, was wanted on suspicion of corruption and bribery and was subject to an Interpol red notice, the Communist Party of China's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said in a statement on Friday.
Yang was repatriated through "close cooperation" between the judicial, law enforcement and foreign affairs authorities of China and the U.S., the CCDI said.
Yang is the first of the 100 sent back from the U.S. and the 12th from the list, which was released in April, to be netted. He is believed by the CCDI to have fled to the U.S. in 2001.
"The case will expedite the repatriation of other suspects who fled to the U.S. since China will improve its collection of evidence while the U.S. will strengthen the supervision and investigation of Chinese fugitives," Huang Feng, director of the Institute for International Criminal Law at Beijing Normal University, told the Global Times on Friday, citing U.S. probes into suspects' money laundering and violations of immigration law as examples.
Yang's repatriation marks major progress in Sino-U.S. law enforcement cooperation, according to the CCDI statement.
The repatriation by the U.S. ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to the U.S. indicated that the U.S. is showcasing its willingness to cooperate with China on the hunt for fugitives, Huang said.
The media reported that Yang Jinjun is a brother of Yang Xiuzhu, who tops the most wanted list. She is a former deputy head of the former Zhejiang provincial construction department, allegedly responsible for corruption cases involving as much as 253 million yuan.
Huang said she is likely to be sent back to China from the U.S., as her brother was.
