China Sending Its Corruption Hunters beyond Borders to Locate Corruption Stashes

· Europe is main Hiding Place of Fugitives

G-20 nations among first destinations in move that risks intensifying alarm over expansion of Beijing’s overseas activities

China is dispatching anticorruption enforcers abroad to chase down fugitives and recover stolen assets, a new extension of Beijing’s international reach aimed at strengthening Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s crackdown on graft.

The Communist Party’s top antigraft body and other government offices tasked with tackling corruption have begun stationing officials in some Chinese embassies, where they would coordinate with foreign authorities on law-enforcement matters, among other duties, according to people familiar with the plan.

These anticorruption inspectors will be based mainly in countries where corrupt Chinese officials are likely to have stashed large amounts of illicit funds, such as members of the Group of 20 nations, said one of the people. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the antigraft body, has pledged this year to ramp up cross-border efforts in fighting corruption, particularly across countries that participate in Mr. Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative to build global trade infrastructure—a group that includes G-20 members.

The deployments come as Mr. Xi renews demands to entrench the far-reaching anticorruption crackdown that he has directed since taking power in 2012. Chinese authorities say they have brought back nearly 10,700 suspects from abroad during Mr. Xi’s first two terms as party chief, including more than 60 of China’s 100 most-wanted economic fugitives. But CCDI officials say investigators face a tougher task in trying to solve outstanding cases and deter more sophisticated offenders.

“Currently, quite a number of fugitive cases are old cases that stretch over long time spans and where there are few effective clues,” said a commentary published by the CCDI’s official newspaper in December that called for more international cooperation in fighting graft. Officials must overcome these difficulties by strengthening coordination and coming up with new tactics and techniques, the commentary said.

The presence of anticorruption officials in Chinese embassies risks raising alarm in host countries. In Western capitals, concerns have grown over Chinese security forces trying to conduct law-enforcement duties beyond China’s borders. U.S. officials, for instance, have repeatedly complained about covert Chinese agents chasing fugitives on American soil without authorization.

It couldn’t be determined what specific activities the anticorruption inspectors would engage in abroad. Some are likely to be dispatched as legal attachés, the same title Chinese police officials typically adopt when they are sent abroad as liaison officers to foreign governments, according to one of the people.

Stationing CCDI officials in embassies as law-enforcement liaisons seems to be an attempt to legitimize this agency abroad and its alleged use of extralegal techniques to force fugitives to return to China, according to Laura Harth, campaign director at human-rights group Safeguard Defenders. Such deployments could have “severe effects on the enjoyment of rights and freedoms” of people who are potential targets of the CCDI, Ms. Harth said.

The CCDI didn’t respond to a request for comment.

As the vanguard in Mr. Xi’s withering decadelong crackdown on corruption, the CCDI plays a major role in Beijing’s campaign to pursue economic fugitives who have fled China, block the outflow of ill-gotten money from the country, and recover stolen assets. It does this through two parallel operations, “Fox Hunt” and “Sky Net.”

Fox Hunt focuses on repatriating fugitives accused of committing economic and financial crimes. Sky Net also targets the channels that suspects allegedly use to funnel money abroad, as well as the people and entities who help run these channels. Through Sky Net, China captured more than 7,000 fugitives and recovered some 35.2 billion yuan, or about $5.12 billion, in what authorities describe as ill-gotten assets during the five-year period that ended in late 2022, according to official data.

The CCDI has sought cooperation with foreign law-enforcement agencies for these operations, though Chinese officials have often struggled to get Western counterparts to help detain and repatriate suspects, in part due to lack of extradition agreements with major powers like the U.S., as well as Beijing’s alleged use of extraterritorial tactics in trying to retrieve suspects.

When Chinese security officials traveled to the U.S. in 2017 to press fugitive businessman Guo Wengui to return to China, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation told the Chinese officials that they were acting in violation of their transit visas and instructed them to leave the country.

China has signed extradition treaties with about 60 countries, though more than a dozen of these pacts haven’t been fully ratified and brought into effect. Some 10 European Union member states—including France, Spain and Italy—have agreed to extradition pacts with Beijing, though many other Western governments haven’t done so.

At a policy meeting in January, CCDI chief Li Xi committed to bolstering Sky Net efforts this year, saying the agency would strengthen international cooperation in anticorruption work, and build “an integrated mechanism for chasing fugitives, preventing escape, and recovering stolen assets.” He also demanded efforts to improve mechanisms for applying relevant laws beyond China’s borders, without specifying how.

Chinese lawmakers have also discussed writing similar commitments on boosting international cooperation in anticorruption work into a forthcoming law on foreign relations, according to a recent draft.

China has said that many fugitives accused of corruption and financial crimes use countries in North America and Europe as major havens, and called on those governments to repatriate more of these suspects. For instance, Chinese authorities have described how one former state-enterprise employee, No. 3 on a list of 100 most-wanted economic fugitives that Beijing issued in 2015, had hidden himself or placed assets across a number of European countries—including Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Cyprus and Sweden—before he was detained in Stockholm in 2018.

While international law-enforcement actions often involve formal cooperation and requests for assistance between governments, Washington has accused Beijing of applying clandestine methods to hunt fugitives in America. These include allegations that Chinese security agents have entered the U.S. under false pretenses to track down suspects and coerce them into returning to China, and that such agents sometimes used suspects’ family members as intermediaries.

In 2022, the European Court of Human Rights blocked China’s efforts to extradite a Taiwanese man wanted for alleged telecoms fraud, citing the risk of ill-treatment in Chinese detention facilities—a ruling that legal experts and rights activists say would complicate Chinese attempts to recover fugitives from many European countries.

Some foreign diplomats say it would be politically fraught for Beijing to deploy Communist Party inspectors in foreign capitals, as host countries generally treat personnel in foreign diplomatic missions as government officials, rather than operatives from political parties.

CCDI personnel would likely take up their overseas roles in their capacities as government officials from a state agency, rather than as party inspectors, to conform with diplomatic convention, according to the people familiar with the plan.

For instance, CCDI officials taking postings in embassies abroad could go as officials from the National Supervisory Commission, one of the people said. That commission functions as the CCDI’s state equivalent in a practice known as “one set of personnel, two signboards.”