Li Min, a former official of a State-owned enterprise who fled to Germany in 2001 after allegedly embezzling 1.3 million yuan (US$19,058), returned to China to face justice six years later.

Li Min, a former official of a State-owned enterprise who fled to Germany in 2001 after allegedly embezzling 1.3 million yuan (US$19,058), returned to China to face justice six years later. [The Beijing Times]

Instead of extradition, Li voluntarily came back thanks to persuasive prosecutors' three-year cross-ocean phone calls, sources with the Fangshan district people's procuratorate in Beijing said yesterday.

Prosecutors traced the phone number of her son in Germany, and relentlessly urged him to persuade her to stop running from the law.

Li was among a dozen officials charged with corruption who were successfully persuaded back for justice in the past three years, the Supreme People's Procuratorate said yesterday.

"It was a perfect example of a soft approach adopted by prosecutors to get officials charged with corruption to return to China," Huang Feng, a law professor in the Beijing Normal University and an expert on extradition, told China Daily.

Li, a former manager of Beijing Yanhai Petroleum Chemicals Technology Development Co Ltd, fled to Germany after she was told she was going to be charged with embezzling funds in 2001.

Zhao Haili, a publicity official with the procuratorate said prosecutors had constantly contacted Li's son, who was studying in Germany, to know of her whereabouts since late 2004.

During a later phone call prosecutor Liu Junliang of the Fangshan procuratorate told Li's son that three of his mother's accomplices in the embezzlement had been given light punishment after they surrendered.

In September 2007, Li eventually agreed to return to China to confess her crime.

"I regret the fact that I committed the crime and that I fled thereafter. I often cried," she told prosecutors.

Professor Huang said the "soft approach" to get accused officials at-large to return to the country was "working out".

"It is a good substitute for extradition," he said. "The practice saves both countries involved a lot of money and leads to lenient sentences. The approach should be encouraged." Hu Xing, former deputy chief of the Yunan provincial transportation department, accused of accepting bribes worth 40 million yuan, was also persuaded to return to China from Singapore in 2007.

Hu, who fled the country in January 2007, confessed to accepting bribes and returned every penny of the 40 million yuan.

As there was neither extradition treaties nor criminal judicial assistance treaties between the two countries, the Chinese police went to Singapore and spoke to Hu face-to-face with the assistance of Singapore's judicial departments.

In August 2007, Hu was sentenced to life in prison.

Hu could have been sentenced to death considering the size of bribes, Huang said.

(China Daily May 14, 2009)