Suspect's return voluntary: wife says

Gao Shan, one of China's most wanted fugitives who had lived as a refugee in Canada for eight years, voluntarily turned himself into the Chinese police after carefully considering his options, his wife said.

"Gao thought for a long time before he decided to return to China to confess to his crime," Gao's wife Li Xue, who is still in Canada, was quoted by China News Service as saying on Wednesday.

Li said Gao wasn't threatened into returning.

"He just said that it's time to face everything that happened in the past," she said.

Gao, former head of a branch of the State-owned Bank of China in Northeast China's Heilongjiang province, is accused of embezzling up to 1 billion yuan ($157 million ) together with Li Dongzhe, another suspect, from companies and government departments through the use of bank note fraud between 2002 to 2004, according to China's Ministry of Public Security. Gao fled overseas at the end of 2004.

The ministry said in a statement released on Monday that Chinese police have been trying during the past several years to persuade Gao to turn himself in. He decided to do so after hearing those repeated appeals.

Before coming back to China, Li said, Gao had been living with his family in an apartment in Vancouver, Canada. Gao then worked in the decoration industry and is believed to never have talked about the crimes he stands accused of.

Li declined to discuss her plans for her daughter and herself.

Qian Lu, an immigration lawyer in Vancouver, said Gao's willingness to face trial is connected with the Chinese government's pledge that another former fugitive who had fled to Canada, Lai Changxing, would not suffer the death penalty after returning to China.

"Moreover, it has become increasingly difficult to continue staying in Canada legally," Qian was quoted as saying. "So Gao chose to return to China in an attempt to get a lenient punishment."

Li Guifang, deputy director of the All China Lawyers Association's criminal defense department, said Gao was in part forced to return to China by Canada's recent strengthening of its policies governing both immigration and the applications refugees must fill out to seek asylum.