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[h=2]S’pore is among top destinations for corrupt PRC officials to stash cash[/h]
June 11th, 2012 |
Author: Online Press
(LA Times, 6 Jun) – When anti-corruption investigators started probing China’s high-speed rail program, they discovered that one of the Railway Ministry’s chief engineers owned a five-bedroom, five-bath Mediterranean-style house in Los Angeles County.
Zhang Shuguang had bought the $840,000 house in the city of Walnut nine years earlier when he was reportedly earning just $365 a month. His wife and daughter had moved there, which led investigators to suspect that he intended to skip out of China to join them.
That made Zhang, 56, what the Chinese call a luo guan, or “naked official.” The term refers to an official who has sent his family and money abroad and is poised to make a getaway himself. The communist government has been trying to put officials on a shorter leash since 2007, amid a flurry of scandals in which public funds were squandered on mistresses, luxury villas, cars and gambling…
Chinese prosecutors say 18,487 officials, including executives from state-owned companies, have been caught during the last 12 years while allegedly trying to flee overseas with ill-gotten gains, according to this week’s issue of China Economic Weekly. The magazine described the typical “naked official” as a man in his 50s who was approaching retirement and had accumulated at least $13 million.
The People’s Bank of China last year inadvertently made public a confidential study stating that 800 billion Chinese yuan ($126 billion at today’s exchange rate) had been siphoned overseas by thousands of officials in the government and state-owned companies from the mid-1990s until 2008.
Another report by the Washington-based watchdog Global Financial Integrity, which tracked illicit outflow of money by all people, not just officials, found China led the world with $2.7 trillion (five times as much as runner-up Mexico) illegally taken out of the country from 2000 to 2009.
The top destinations for stashing cash were the United States, Europe, Australia, Canada, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Within the United States, Los Angeles topped the list.
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Rest of the article from: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/06/world/la-fg-china-naked-official-20120606
(LA Times, 6 Jun) – When anti-corruption investigators started probing China’s high-speed rail program, they discovered that one of the Railway Ministry’s chief engineers owned a five-bedroom, five-bath Mediterranean-style house in Los Angeles County.
Zhang Shuguang had bought the $840,000 house in the city of Walnut nine years earlier when he was reportedly earning just $365 a month. His wife and daughter had moved there, which led investigators to suspect that he intended to skip out of China to join them.
That made Zhang, 56, what the Chinese call a luo guan, or “naked official.” The term refers to an official who has sent his family and money abroad and is poised to make a getaway himself. The communist government has been trying to put officials on a shorter leash since 2007, amid a flurry of scandals in which public funds were squandered on mistresses, luxury villas, cars and gambling…
Chinese prosecutors say 18,487 officials, including executives from state-owned companies, have been caught during the last 12 years while allegedly trying to flee overseas with ill-gotten gains, according to this week’s issue of China Economic Weekly. The magazine described the typical “naked official” as a man in his 50s who was approaching retirement and had accumulated at least $13 million.
The People’s Bank of China last year inadvertently made public a confidential study stating that 800 billion Chinese yuan ($126 billion at today’s exchange rate) had been siphoned overseas by thousands of officials in the government and state-owned companies from the mid-1990s until 2008.
Another report by the Washington-based watchdog Global Financial Integrity, which tracked illicit outflow of money by all people, not just officials, found China led the world with $2.7 trillion (five times as much as runner-up Mexico) illegally taken out of the country from 2000 to 2009.
The top destinations for stashing cash were the United States, Europe, Australia, Canada, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Within the United States, Los Angeles topped the list.
.
Rest of the article from: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/06/world/la-fg-china-naked-official-20120606
