A new report outlining how Chinese authorities have forced alleged criminals back to the country through extrajudicial methods – including from New Zealand – has led one MP to call for the creation of a dedicated parliamentary committee to tackle foreign interference.
The report from human rights NGO Safeguard Defenders looks back at the first decade of Operation Fox Hunt and Operation Sky Net, two global operations to apprehend overseas Chinese accused of financial crimes.
Though the Chinese government has touted the operations as part of a successful anti-corruption crackdown, claiming the successful return of more than 12,000 fugitives, others have raised concerns with the methods used to compel individuals’ returns, including pressure campaigns against their families and friends.
The report details 283 individual accounts of extrajudicial returns from at least 56 countries and two territories – including 10 from New Zealand, with one case from as recently as 2021.
Nine of those had gone back after a persuasion operation conducted from within China, involving telecommunications and pressure on their family and relatives back home. One man – Bill Liu, also known as Yang Yongming – had been subjected to a persuasion operation conducted overseas “in direct contact with the target abroad by PRC agents or their proxies”.
Liu’s case attracted headlines after he agreed to a secret deal with Chinese authorities including his return to face fraud charges, as well as the forfeiture of almost $43 million in assets to Kiwi authorities.
In 2018, Newsroom reported on another of the cases listed in the report – the return of Jiang Lei to face embezzlement charges, which NZ Police said resulted from a voluntary agreement between the man and Chinese authorities rather than any extradition process.
However, several other cases appear to have received little to no publicity within New Zealand.
In July 2021, the website for the Guangdong-based Nanfang Daily reported on how a suspect called Feng had been “persuaded to return” to China over his alleged involvement in the illegal extraction of $26.5m worth of minerals. After public security officials “communicated relevant laws and criminal policies to Feng through his family members”, the man agreed to return to China to plead guilty and face punishment, the newspaper said.
In a separate 2019 case, the Guangdong Discipline Inspection Commission’s official website recounted how Yu Shanfu had returned from “a certain country in the South Pacific” to face corruption allegations, after a task force tracked down his son during a visit to China and threatened to stop him from leaving the country if he did not provide information about his father’s whereabouts.
Negotiations on his return were hastened after “shootings and explosions occurred in the area where Yu Shanfu was hiding” on March 15, 2019 – seemingly a reference to the Christchurch terror attack – and he returned to China before the end of the month.
“Even if you have money abroad, your heart has no home. China is a country governed by law, and returning to China to surrender is the best way out,” the commission reported Yu Shanfu as saying.
Labour MP Ingrid Leary, who serves as one of the New Zealand co-chairs for the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, told Newsroom the report provided further evidence of New Zealand’s potential vulnerability to foreign interests and influences, following last month’s attribution of state-linked cyber attacks.
“No country is immune from foreign interference from state and non-state organisations, and the threats to our democracy require us to be more vigilant and find ways to respond more nimbly,” Leary said.
She believed a permanent select committee on foreign interference and protecting democracy should be set up, with a broader remit than Parliament’s current intelligence and security committee and the ability to actively investigate trends involving threats to foreign interference.
“Taking a cross-party approach is the best way to take the politics out of it and safeguard our national interests,” Leary said, suggesting the committee could gather evidence publicly or in secret to avoid politicising the process. It could then make recommendations to other select committees on a unanimous basis, leaving it to them to adopt or reject any suggestions through the usual parliamentary process.
Leary said she was considering writing a letter to Speaker Gerry Brownlee about the proposal, while other MPs were also discussing the idea and due to make their own decisions soon.
She also wanted Ipac’s New Zealand wing to present a petition to Parliament’s petitions committee, asking it to recommend a special debate on foreign interference.
China’s efforts to repatriate alleged criminals hit the headlines last month, after Australian media reported on a video showing dozens of Chinese police flying to Fiji in 2017 and arresting alleged cyber scammers to be flown to China on a charter plane.
China has faced difficulties in carrying out its anti-corruption drive because of its lack of extradition agreements with a number of Western countries, including New Zealand, due to concerns about its judicial and prisons system.
South Korean national and New Zealand resident Kyung Yup Kim’s fight against extradition to China on a murder charge is into its 13th year, with Newsroom recently revealing his lawyers were challenging a fresh surrender order signed by the Government.
The foreign influence of so-called ‘traditional allies’ is out in the open here. For example, the failure of this new government to call out the genocidal aggression of Israel into Palestinian territory is not only in the open, but praised in some quarters.