Wanted Corrupt PRC Official (S'pore PR) Deported To China

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

Excerpt from "6 of 100 most wanted PRC fugitives in Singapore"



PRC fugitive buys condo and given PR status in Singapore

Li Huabo, the Jiangxi official who escaped to Singapore had been sentenced in Singapore in Apr 2013 to 15 months’ jail for illegally receiving US$182,723 in his Singapore bank account. Beijing accused him of siphoning off 94 million yuan (S$19.2 million) of government funds in total over five years when he was a finance bureau officer in Poyang county in Jiangxi province. The funds were set up to help the Poyang county’s one million poor residents.

Mr Li fled with his wife and 2 teenage daughters in 2011, eventually settling in Singapore. He and his family were later granted permanent resident (PR) status by the Singapore government, through EDB’s Global Investor Programme (GIP).

Mr Li actually started to plan his move to Singapore in 2010, a year before he fled. He approached a Chinese company which deals in immigration. The company helped him apply for his PR status through EDB’s GIP. He quit his job in China and moved to Singapore with his family, 2 months after his PR status was granted in November 2010.

With the millions of dollars he had, he bought a $1.3 million 3-bedroom private condominium with cash for his family to live in Singapore.

Mr Li granted BusinessWeek an interview in 2013 and this is the BusinessWeek report [Link]:

On a typically humid Singapore afternoon, Li Huabo leads visitors through the gates of his luxury condo complex—past the swimming pool, Jacuzzi, and reflexology center—to his three-bedroom apartment. He puts a stack of files on the dark marble dining room table while his wife gets juice from the kitchen, which looks out on a nature preserve…

His story provides a glimpse of the pervasiveness of influence peddling at all levels of China’s bureaucracy and shows how difficult it is to stop abuses that have become an accepted part of doing business (in China).

Mr Li was arrested in Singapore after Interpol’s Beijing office sought Singapore’s help. It is not known if the PR status of Li and his family members will be revoked later, since he has been found guilty of committing an offence under Singapore law.


Source: South China Morning Post

China repatriates No 2 'Sky Net' fugitive official who fled to Singapore after alleged 94m yuan fraud

Li Huabo, who fled to Singapore in 2011 after alleged fraud involving 94 million yuan, later jailed in city state for receiving stolen funds

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 10 May, 2015, 5:23am
UPDATED : Sunday, 10 May, 2015, 5:23am


Chinese police escort Li Huabo (centre) upon his arrival at the Beijing
Capital International Airport yesterday. Photo: Xinhua

China's campaign targeting the 100 "most wanted" corrupt officials that have fled abroad has led to the repatriation of the No 2 fugitive on the list, state media reported yesterday.

Li Huabo, former section director of the finance bureau in Poyang county, in Jiangxi province, fled to Singapore in January 2011, after being accused of fraud involving 94 million yuan (HK$119 million).

He was returned to China yesterday after serving a 15-month jail sentence in Singapore.

The detention of Li is a major coup for Beijing's "Sky Net" anti-graft operation.

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection published a detailed list on April 22 of 100 fugitives it wants to extradite back to China.

These fugitives are subject to Interpol red notices, which appeal for the location and arrest of each wanted person and ask member states to extradite them.

The notices include a photo of each fugitive, and details about their gender, former employment, passport details, date of fleeing, nations where they are thought to have gone, and their alleged crimes.

In the hunt for Li, Xinhua said Beijing officials paid eight visits to Singapore to negotiate his arrest and the retrieval of fund. It was reported that China had requested assistance from Singapore's justice system to provide evidence leading to Li's assets in Singapore being frozen.

He was arrested, prosecuted and jailed for 15 months in Singapore after being convicted of receiving stolen funds.

Li had previously told a Singaporean court in 2013 that his personal wealth, including the S$1.5 million (HK$8.7 million) he used to obtain permanent Singaporean residency and a S$1.3 million three-bedroom apartment he bought in the city state had been earned through his legitimate business dealings, rather than by siphoning off public funds. He had previously denied any embezzlement.

A Singapore prosecutor claimed Li had set up a shell company in 2006 and used bogus government seals and fake invoices in order to steal millions of yuan.

He was arrested in March 2011 by Singapore police after a tip-off and a request from Beijing via Interpol.

No extradition treaty exists between Singapore and China.

Li's had been paid 3,000 yuan a month as a county finance bureau official, but he also traded in coal, cotton and fertiliser, ran a tourism agency that organised trips to Macau, and owned a 42 per cent stake in an oil refinery.

He was alleged to have embezzled 94 million - equal to a quarter of the struggling county's annual revenue. But Li had said he had earned about 100 million yuan over three years from his refinery investment.

Officials in Poyang set up a task force in February 2011 after Li had allegedly phoned a colleague, and confessed to stealing from the government.

However, Li said he had never made any such call.

End of Article

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