A former Guangdong official is on the run after dodging an eight-year jail term by falsely claiming that he had Hepatitis B.

Chen Jianming, former director of the Dianbai county education authority, was found guilty of involvement in one of the country's biggest fraud cases in 2000.

He was sentenced to eight years in prison in early 2002. But Chen used a loophole in Chinese law and claimed he suffered from Hepatitis B.

The court said Chen should serve part of his sentence in home detention so the disease was not spread but there has been no record of Chen serving any time in prison, Outlook Weekly magazine reported.

Chen was removed from detention by the Dianbai court three days after sentence.

Under the current criminal law, criminals serving a sentence out of prison should be under strict surveillance by local public security authorities.

"There were no records of surveillance against Chen," a source with the Guangdong provincial procuratorate said.

Local media reported Chen had been "doing business" in Guangzhou and Dongguan when he was in detention.

The procuratorate told the court to cancel the detention ruling after finding Chen did not suffer from Hepatitis B.

The court decided it would enforce the prison sentence on June 10, 2002, but officers could not find Chen. "We issued a wanted notice for the arrest of Chen in 2002, but he is still at large," the Maoming public security department said.

Legal experts blamed Chen's disappearance on "insufficient implementation" of the home detention system. "Usually, it is hard to tell whether a criminal has suffered a serious disease like Hepatitis B. Some criminals try to avoid serving in prison through presenting a 'false' health report to the court," Du Xiaojun, a legal professor at the Guangdong University, said.

Du said few public security departments had "special forces" to carry out the surveillance against criminals serving home detention.

(China Daily May 19, 2009)