Delegates meet to fight crimes By Qin Jize (China Daily) Updated: 2005-12-12 05:23
SHENZHEN, Guangdong Province: Prosecutors-general from Asian and European
countries will express their determination today to establish an efficient
mechanism of co-ordination and co-operation in order to combat trans-national
organized crime.
It is expected that this pledge will be stated in a declaration at the very
first Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) Prosecutors General Conference, which has been
running for three days and will conclude today.
Prosecutors-general from 43 countries and four international organizations
vowed to expand international co-operations in combating organized crime,
corruption, money laundering, terrorism, and arms and drugs trafficking.
Henk Marquart Scholtz, secretary-general of the International Association of
Prosecutors said that the key to combating trans-national organized crime is to
ask for more countries to ratify and implement the provisions of the United
Nations Convention and implement bilateral legal and judicial assistance
treaties, extradition treaties and other regional, inter-regional legal and
judicial assistance treaties.
China has been active in seeking international co-operation in the fight
against trans-national crime, in particular with corruption cases.
About 50,000 officials have been punished as a result of China's
anti-corruption purge that began in 2003, said Wang Zhenchuan, deputy
prosecutor-general of the Supreme People's Procuratorate of China.
He said the country's ratification of the United Nations Convention Against
Corruption has demonstrated the determination of the top lawmaking body to stamp
out corruption in collaboration with the international community.
Problems such as how to co-operate with relevant countries on the capture of
malfeasants, in order to prevent them escaping and hiding have demanded the
international community to establish a worldwide co-operation mechanism.
An international law against corruption will go into effect on Wednesday and
will be conducive to the repatriation of corrupt criminals fleeing abroad and
the recovery of assets illegally transferred to foreign lands.
Zhang Xuejun, procurator-general of South China's Guangdong Province, said
the convention would provide a strong international legal basis for China to
overcome its difficulties in investigating and extraditing criminals, however,
the first step is to enact the necessary to enable this legislation, including
statutes on money laundering to better adapt the Chinese legal system to the UN
Anti-Corruption Convention.
(China Daily 12/12/2005 page2)
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