Chinese court opens trial to confiscate fugitive's illegal assets

NANNING - A court in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region opened a trial Thursday on confiscating the illegal assets of a Red Notice fugitive suspected of embezzlement.

According to Guilin City People's Procuratorate, it launched an investigation into Huang Yanlan for misusing and embezzling a huge amount of money in August 2002. Later Huang fled. Interpol issued a Red Notice on her in 2005.

Since the suspect remains a fugitive, prosecutors have applied to the Guilin Intermediate People's Court to formally confiscate her illegal assets.

From 1993 to 1998, Huang allegedly took advantage of her position as general manager of a state-owned enterprise in the city of Guilin and deputy head of a city government department, and extracted about 1.17 billion yuan ($184.3 million) from the company's accounts, according to the prosecutors.

"The money was not recorded in the company's financial books," the prosecutors' application documents said.

About 400 million yuan of the money was found to have been transferred to another bank account illegally set up by the company to invest in futures.

Huang was later also suspected of personally extracting and entrusting a third party to withdraw about 575 million yuan from the futures investment account, 529 million yuan of which was also missing from any financial books, the prosecutors said.

Huang and her family paid 30 million yuan for 52 real estate properties in Shanghai from 1997 to 1999 as the first installment.

The Guilin Intermediate People's Court did not announce the judgement Thursday.