BEIJING, July 11 (Xinhua) -- Xu Chaofan, suspect of a 485 million U.S. dollar bank embezzlement case, was repatriated back to China Wednesday, 17 years after he fled to the United States, the country's top anti-graft agency said.
There repatriation of Xu, the former chief of Bank of China Kaiping branch in south China's Guangdong Province, is an important outcome of law enforcement cooperation against corruption between China and the United States, according to a statement from the official website of the Communist Party of China Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
Xu fled to the United States in 2001, and the Interpol placed a Red Notice on him. He was arrested by the U.S. side in 2003 and sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2009.
Xu is the first suspect of a duty-related crime to be repatriated from abroad since the founding of the National Supervisory Commission in March.
As of now, the Chinese government and Bank of China have retrieved more than 2 billion yuan (about 300 million dollars at the current exchange rate) of stolen funds, according to the office in charge of fugitive repatriation and asset recovery under the central anti-corruption coordination group.
China will expand cooperation with other countries to knit a tighter sky net to bring back fugitives from overseas and recover stolen money, not a single corrupt element on the run will be spared, the statement said.
