$10 billion smuggling ring: Former fugitive Lai Changxing confesses, Chinese officials say
China's most-wanted man, who was deported from Canada in July after a decade-long legal battle, has admitted to his crimes and will now be handed over to prosecutors, state media reported Friday.
Beijing had sought the deportation of Lai Changxing for years, accusing him of running a multi-billion dollar smuggling ring in the southeastern city of Xiamen in the s.
The move brings authorities a step closer to a conclusion in one of China's most lurid, long-running corruption cases.
Prosecutors indicted Lai for allegedly masterminding a network that smuggled everything from cigarettes to cars and oil and bribed dozens of government workers between and , China's state broadcaster CCTV reported.
Lai and other key members of the syndicate have "confessed to the facts of the smuggling and bribery charges without concealing anything," the report said.
The "legal rights" of Lai and the other suspects were "fully guaranteed," with Lai able to meet with his lawyer, state radio added.
Lai became China's most-wanted man after he fled to Canada in and fought extradition for 12 years.
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(AP) BEIJING - The man once considered China's most-wanted fugitive was sentenced to life in prison for smuggling and bribery in a lurid corruption case that reached into the highest echelons of the Communist Party and involved a decade-long extradition fight.
The official Xinhua News Agency reported that Lai Changxing was convicted and sentenced Friday morning by the Intermediate People's Court in Xiamen, the port city which was his base. On top of the life sentence for smuggling and a concurrent year sentence for bribery, the court ordered all of Lai's personal property seized, Xinhua said.
The sentencing marked an end for what a decade ago had been one of China's biggest political scandals. From Xiamen and through his company the Yuanhua Group, Lai ran an extensive smuggling network, using the amassed fortune to cultivate powerful political protectors. Tainted in the scandal were a deputy police minister, who was later given a suspended death sentence, and the one-time provincial party secretary who was politically untouched and became a member of the party's ruling Politburo.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters at a regular news conference that the handling
Chinese fugitive Lai Changxing, the prime suspect in China's largest smuggling case in recent history, left here Friday for his home country under Canadian police escort.
A source who declined to be named told Xinhua that police had escorted Lai onto a civilian flight before the plane departed from Vancouver International Airport for China in the afternoon.
The repatriation, executed a day after a Canadian federal court upheld Lai's deportation order, ended Lai's fugitive life in Canada 12 years after he fled to the North American country.
Lai, 53, was the alleged mastermind of a notorious smuggling gang believed to have smuggled billions of dollars' worth of various products in the s. The case is listed as the largest of its kind in China since
Since Lai's runaway, Chinese authorities had repeatedly demanded his extradition.
Fugitive Lai Changxing to be deported after federal court dismisses application
VANCOUVER &#; Assurances by the Chinese government that a fugitive won&#;t face the death penalty or be tortured if returned to face corruption charges have convinced a Federal Court judge not to halt his deportation.
Lai Changxing has been fighting to remain in Canada since arriving in after accusations in his homeland he masterminded a smuggling operation that siphoned millions from the Chinese government.
He was arrested by the Canada Border Services Agency two weeks ago after the federal government said it accepted China&#;s pledge.
In a judgement released Thursday evening in Vancouver, Justice Michel Shore agreed and dismissed the man&#;s application for a stay of deportation.
&#;Mr. Lai is a common criminal fugitive from the Chinese justice system who has had full access to Canada&#;s immigration processes over the last eleven years and has been found not to be at risk if removed to China on the basis of extraordinary assurances received and held as valid by the minister&#;s delegate,&#; Shore said in his judgment.
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&#;Therefore, the balance of conve
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