Interpol credited in surrender

A fugitive suspected of contract fraud returned to China on Monday and turned himself in, according to the country’s top watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

Xu Xuewei, who was No 91 in the list of China’s top 100 overseas fugitives, is the 46th to return.

Xu was the controller of a science and technology company and a chemical fiber company based in Jiangyin, Jiangsu province. He fled to the United States in November 2012, the CCDI said.

Xu is the latest fugitive so far whose return is partly due to the red notice system of the International Criminal Police Organization, commonly known as Interpol.

Chiefs of police and security experts from around the world will gather at Interpol’s 86th General Assembly in Beijing from Tuesday to Friday.

Key topics during the annual event include ensuring that real-time data is in the hands of front-line officers and that cooperation is achieved across various agencies to combat terrorism and cybercrime and to catch international fugitives.

Interpol enables police in 190 member countries to work together to fight international crime. Each of the member countries maintains a national central bureau staffed by local law enforcement officials who carry out investigations and make arrests.

As an Interpol member country, China has stepped up efforts to help the organization collect information on foreign terrorist fighters. Last year, it placed 2 million pieces of information on stolen and lost Chinese identification documents into Interpol’s database. The data are updated monthly, according to the Ministry of Public Security.

Interpol, the world’s largest international police organization, uses a notice system to issue international requests for cooperation or alerts allowing police in member countries to share critical crime-related information.

It issues red notices – the most serious of its eight types of notices – when a subject is wanted by national jurisdictions for prosecution or to serve a sentence based on an arrest warrant or court decision.

Interpol will assist national police forces in identifying and locating such fugitives with a view toward their arrest and extradition, or similar lawful action. The notice is not itself an international arrest warrant.

In 2016, China submitted 612 red notice requests to Interpol. Of those, 230 were published, the ministry said. The Chinese police handled 2,542 investigative requests from foreign police forces that were transmitted via Interpol in 2016, an increase of 140 percent over 2015.

At the organization’s annual general assembly in 2016, Meng Hongwei, deputy director of the ministry, was elected as the president of the organization, which is headquartered in Lyon, France.