13th October, 2017
A court in eastern China has sentenced the country’s former most-wanted fugitive, Yang Xiuzhu, to eight years in prison, state media reported on Friday.
“Yang was accused of accepting bribes and embezzlement,’’ it reported.
Yang, a former deputy director of the construction bureau of east China’s Zhejiang province, was number one on a list of China’s 100 most-wanted fugitives abroad in 2016.
She voluntarily returned from the U.S. in November 2016 after fleeing China in April 2003 due to an investigation by anti-corruption inspectors into her alleged involvement in embezzlement.
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Her return came amid an ongoing operation by the Chinese government to capture suspects who have fled the country.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has spearheaded an anti-graft drive, which has targeted officials at all levels and punished over 1.3 million people in five years.
“The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimates that 16,000 to 18,000 former officials fled the country with a total of 800 billion Yuan (140 billion dollars) from the mid-1990s to 2008,’’ it noted.