Interpol tragicomedy

China suspends cooperation with France on police affairs, says report
Action comes after France gave asylum to wife of jailed former Interpol chief Meng Hongwei
By Emma Graham-Harrison

Former Interpol chief Meng Hongwei at his trial in Tianjin in June. 

China has cut off all cooperation with France on police affairs, after Paris gave asylum to the Chinese wife of a former Interpol chief now in jail on corruption charges, the French newspaper Le Monde reported.

Chinese authorities told a diplomat in Beijing in late July that a decision had been made to halt all cooperation after Grace Meng was awarded political asylum in May, the newspaper reported.
Increasingly assertive internationally, Beijing has made the decision to suspend a key aspect of the diplomatic and security relationship with Paris at a time when it is already in the global spotlight over protests in Hong Kong and an escalating trade dispute with the US.
Meng first hit headlines last year, when she decided to go public about her husband’s sudden disappearance during a trip home to China in September.
Interpol had not been given any information about the whereabouts of Meng Hongwei, who had been elected president of the body in 2016, leading to the humiliating spectacle of the global police body pleading with China for information about its chief.

Grace Meng at a press conference with journalists in France in 2018, in which she did not want her face to be shown.

In October, under international pressure, China finally admitted that Hongwei had been detained. 

He was not seen in public again until June, when he appeared in court in the north-eastern port city of Tianjin, confessed to accepting more than $2m in bribes and expressed regret for his crime, a court statement said.
A confession assures a conviction but it was not immediately clear when a verdict and sentence would be handed down. 

Confessions in corruption cases, often televised, have become a hallmark of dictator Xi Jinping’s rule; he has put a very public crackdown on official graft at the heart of his rule.
Chinese authorities reportedly also wanted to charge Grace Meng, Le Monde said, but she stayed in France, where she has been given police protection, and sought asylum. 

Grace says she fears personal retaliation from Chinese authorities, and in spring France opened a judicial inquiry into a kidnapping attempt.
The end of police cooperation is likely to complicate Chinese efforts to seek fugitives in France, Le Monde said. 

For Paris, it will complicate efforts to track down up to €500m stolen by fraudsters and sent by bank transfer to China.
It will also undermine work to protect intellectual property rights in China, where, despite decades of pressure from western governments, counterfeiting is still rampant.

Interpol Tragicomedy

China Expels Meng Hongwei From Communist Party for ‘Extravagant’ Spending

By Javier C. Hernández

Meng Hongwei, the former head of Interpol, at the Interpol World gathering in Singapore in 2017.

BEIJING — China’s ruling Communist Party expelled the former chief of Interpol on Wednesday, accusing him of abusing his power to finance an extravagant lifestyle and committing “serious” violations of the law.
The disappearance of the former Interpol chief, Meng Hongwei, during a trip to China last fall drew global attention and highlighted the perils of being on the wrong side of China’s opaque, highly politicized legal system.

The Chinese authorities later said he had been placed under investigation, but the move damaged China’s reputation and raised doubts about Xi Jinping’s efforts to expand its global presence.
Meng, 65, the first Chinese citizen to lead Interpol, has not been heard from since.
The announcement — a rare official update on Meng since his disappearance in October — came as Xi was back in Beijing after concluding a visit this week to France, where he met with President Emmanuel Macron.
Meng’s wife, Grace Meng, had appealed to Mr. Macron in recent days to raise her husband’s case with Xi and to demand answers about his whereabouts, according to Agence France-Presse.
Since coming to power in 2012, Xi has led a wide-ranging campaign against corruption and perceived political disloyalty that has ensnared thousands of people, including many high-profile officials.
The party’s anticorruption agency, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, said in a statement Wednesday that Meng had abused his power for personal gain. 

It said that he “recklessly squandered state capital and property to satisfy his family’s extravagant lifestyle.” 

The agency accused Meng of routinely ignoring decisions by top party leaders.
“His family tradition is corrupted,” the statement said. 

“His view on power is twisted.”
Ms. Meng, the former official’s wife, has said that she has not heard from her husband since late September, when he sent a phone message with an emoji of a knife as he left on a trip to China, which she interpreted as a sign of danger.
In the statement on Wednesday, the anticorruption agency also accused Meng of encouraging his wife to use his power and prestige for personal benefit.
Meng, a former vice minister of security, will now likely face a trial on corruption charges.

Interpol Tragicomedy

Wife of Disappeared Former Interpol President Lawyers Up in Europe
By Ng Yik-tung and Sing Man

Grace Meng, wife of missing Interpol president Meng Hongwei, consults her mobile phone in a hotel lobby in Lyon, France, Oct. 7, 2018.

The wife of former Interpol president Meng Hongwei has hired two European law firms in a bid to track down her husband, who was detained last month on suspicion of bribery during a trip home to China.
In an e-mail statement to Reuters, Grace Meng said she had received offers of help from all over the world since her husband's sudden disappearance and his subsequent resignation from Interpol, which the international police body accepted without publicly questioning or explaining the sudden move.
Grace Meng said she has hired the French law firm of Marsigny Avocats and the London-based Lindeborg Counsellors, who specialize in international cases, to help find her husband, who is being detained in an unknown location.
“Above all, I urge everyone to raise their voice in asking China to respect our family’s fundamental human rights,” she said. 

“His disappearance could not be for anything other than political reasons.”
The Lindeborg website describes its team of lawyers as including a former Interpol General Counsel and Legal Affairs Director, and offers experienced legal counsel to those wishing to challenge "red notices," or international arrest warrants issued by the Lyon-based organization.
Paris-based Marsigny specialize in cases involving national or international corruption, misconduct, misappropriation of public funds, money laundering, and tax evasion, and advises clients on international asset seizures and extradition procedures.
Germany-based law scholar Qian Yuejun, who edits the China-Europe Herald newspaper, said Meng's detention is "undoubtedly political," and that the law firms could take steps to track him in China, as well as lobbying for diplomatic pressure to be brought to bear on the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
"Meng Hongwei is a Chinese national, but his place of residence is France, so the law firm can ask the French government to ask the Chinese government about him," said Qian, who last year led a demonstration outside Interpol's German headquarters protesting against Meng's presidency.
"Another angle is Interpol. This case is already a combination of politics and law, and these lawyers will be aware of political channels they could use," he said.

Red Notices
Critics of Meng's presidency said China would use its influence with Interpol to successfully issue "red notices" targeting peaceful critics of the regime and political opponents of Xi Jinping under the banner of the anti-corruption campaign or other criminal allegations.
Qian said Meng's disappearance is yet another example of extrajudicial detentions and punishments meted out by Beijing to its targets.
"If the Chinese government is a rogue state, then it must be clearly described as such," he said. 

"Meng Hongwei was illegally kidnapped, a tragic side-effect of power struggles [in Beijing]."
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang told journalists that Grace Meng could call her husband "at any time," but had declined to do so. 

However, such calls are likely to be closely monitored, and it is unclear whether Meng has had access to a lawyer.

Outlook not good
Beijing-based rights lawyer Lin Qilei said international law enforcement has collided with an authoritarian regime, and that the outlook isn't good for Meng.
"Meng Hongwei's wife may have hired foreign lawyers and be drumming up international support, even to the highest levels of government and diplomacy," Lin said. 

"But she should also try to find him a lawyer in China."
Lin said such an effort would highlight the Chinese government's control over who is allowed to represent former high-ranking officials in such cases.
U.S.-based veteran rights campaigner Liu Qing said the Chinese government has used "mafia tactics" to detain Meng.
"They have just made the head of an international law enforcement body disappear into thin air, by trapping and secretly imprisoning him," Liu said. 

"This shows ... the Chinese Communist Party's contempt for global public opinion."
"The Chinese Communist Party has a long history of international kidnaps," he wrote in a commentary aired on RFA's Mandarin Service, citing the 2015 cross-border detentions of five Hong Kong booksellers wanted by Beijing for selling banned political books to customers in mainland China and the reported abduction of "missing" billionaire Xiao Jianhua from a Hong Kong hotel in April 2017.
"If we do not recognize and cut off the long and pernicious arm of the Chinese Communist Party as it reaches across the world, international due process and rule of law could be ruined beyond all recognition," Liu said.

Interpol tragicomedy

Interpol says no option but to accept China's removal of its chief
Agence France-Presse

China has said Meng Hongwei has resigned as president of Interpol 

Interpol must accept the resignation of its Chinese boss, who is detained in China on charges of accepting bribes, the organisation’s secretary general has said.
Interpol, which coordinates police work across the world, has been “strongly encouraging China to provide us with more details, more information” on what exactly took place when then-director Meng Hongwei was reported missing in early October, Juergen Stock told a news conference at Interpol headquarters in Lyon, France.
The body investigating Meng, China’s National Supervisory Commission, can hold suspects for as long as six months without providing access to legal counsel.
“We have to accept, like we would accept with any other country, that this country [China] is taking sovereign decisions and if that country tells us ‘We have investigations, they are ongoing, and the president has been resigning, he’s not a delegate of the country anymore,’ then we have to accept,” Stock said.
Meng, who had travelled back to China, was reported missing by his wife who had stayed at home in the south-eastern French city of Lyon.
China then informed Interpol that Meng had resigned as the organisation’s president, before saying he had been charged with accepting bribes.
Stock said he had no further details and could only say that the bribery charges were not linked to Meng’s work at Interpol.
“There’s no reason for me to suspect that anything was forced or wrong” regarding the resignation, Stock said.
Meng’s successor is to be appointed later this month at Interpol’s general assembly in Dubai.

Interpol tragicomedy

China and the Case of the Interpol Chief
The New York Times

China has yet to give any details of the corruption charges against Meng Hongwei, the president of Interpol, who disappeared on a visit home and was later said to have been arrested. 

Whatever the charges are, they are almost certainly not the real reason for his fate. 

In China, the law is what the Communist Party says it is — more precisely, what Xi Jinping says it is. 

And when an official of Meng’s global stature is nabbed, it’s a political decision — even if, coincidentally, he was corrupt, as is often the case in China.
Meng understood the rules of that game. 

He had been a vice minister of public security in a police state and had played a role in many operations, including Operation Fox Hunt, which tried to bring Chinese officials and businesspeople suspected of corruption back from abroad. 

His former boss, Zhou Yongkang, was imprisoned for life on corruption charges in 2015. 

Meng’s last WhatsApp message to his wife was an emoji of a knife, which she understood to mean he was in danger.
Interpol has asked Beijing for an explanation for Meng’s detention but has taken no further action. 

The agency issued a statement on Sunday that it had accepted his resignation as president “with immediate effect” and named a replacement.

Whatever else he was, Meng was the president of Interpol, a venerable international organization based in France that facilitates cooperation among police forces from its 192 member countries. 

The position of president is largely ceremonial — a secretary general, currently Jürgen Stock of Germany, runs day-to-day operations. 

But the selection of a Chinese official for the post was a major feather in China’s cap, proudly hailed by Xi a year ago as evidence that China “abided by international rules.”
The crude arrest of Meng proclaims the opposite. 

China’s behavior puts it more closely in a league with Russia, another nation whose authoritarian leader is convinced that his country is due global respect and deference by virtue of its wealth and might, and not its actions. 

Tellingly, both China and Russia have brazenly tried to use Interpol to pursue political foes. 

China put out a “red notice,” in effect a wanted alert, for Dolkun Isa, a self-exiled activist for the rights of China’s beleaguered Uighur minority. 

Russia tried to use Interpol to catch Bill Browder, a hedge-fund manager turned anti-Vladimir Putin campaigner, among other political gadflies. 

In these cases, Interpol has properly refused to cooperate.
It is possible that Meng’s failure to pursue the Isa warrant fed Xi’s anger. 

According to The Economist, a Ministry of Public Security statement condemning Meng’s alleged wrongdoings also stressed the need for “absolute loyalty” and for “resolute support” for the country’s leader.
What Meng did to join the lengthening list of officials purged by Xi may never be fully known outside the Communist hierarchy. 

What is known, and deeply troubling, is how brazenly China is prepared to wage its internal power struggles without any regard for procedures, appearances or international norms.

Interpol tragicomedy

Death note : Wife of ex-Interpol chief receives threat from China
AP
Grace Meng is now under French police protection 

The wife of the former Interpol president who disappeared in China has revealed that she had received a threatening phone call warning of Chinese agents coming for her in France.
In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Grace Meng denied bribery allegations against Meng Hongwei and said that speaking out about his disappearance was placing her "in great danger".
Meng -- who is also China's vice minister of public security -- disappeared while on a trip home to China late last month.
Speaking to the AP late on Monday, Grace Meng said her last contact with her husband was by text message, on September 25, when he wrote "wait for my call" and sent her an emoji image of a knife after traveling back to China.
After a week with no subsequent news, one evening while she was at home in Lyon having put their two young boys to bed, she then got a threatening call on her mobile phone from a man speaking in Chinese.
"He said, 'You listen but you don't speak'," she said. 

He continued: "We've come in two work teams, two work teams just for you."
She said the man also said, "We know where you are," and that when she tried to ask a question, he repeated: "You don't speak, you just listen to me."
As a result, Grace Meng is now under French police protection.

Grace Meng said her husband's disappearance placed her 'in great danger'
Chinese authorities said on Monday that Meng Hongwei was being investigated for taking bribes and other crimes that were a result of his "willfulness".
Hours earlier, Interpol said Meng had resigned as the international police agency's president. 

It was not clear whether he did so of his own free will.
Grace Meng suggested that the bribery accusation is just an excuse for "making him disappear for so long".
"As his wife, I think he's simply incapable of this," she said. 

She said she would be willing to make their bank accounts public.
She said that she spoke out in hopes that doing so might help other families in similar circumstances.
Grace Meng refused to provide her real name to the AP, saying she was too afraid for the safety of her relatives in China. 

It is not customary for Chinese wives to adopt their husbands' names.
She said she has done so now to show her solidarity with her husband. 

Her English name, Grace, is one she has long used, she said.
A French judicial official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed to AP that police are investigating the threat against Grace Meng, but said the probe has yet to determine whether there were indeed Chinese teams sent to Lyon.

Interpol Tragicomedy

Meng Hongwei faces indefinite detention in system experts say is cover for a purge of political rivals
By Lily Kuo in Beijing
 

Meng Hongwei appears to be the latest target of the Chinese ruling Communist party’s controversial anti-corruption campaign. 

The bizarre case of the former Interpol president Meng Hongwei, now detained and under investigation in China, has raised concerns about the country’s expanded anti-corruption drive.
Meng, a senior Chinese security official, appears to be the latest target in a far-reaching anti-graft campaign that critics say is a cover for eliminating political figures disloyal to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.

On Monday, days after Meng was reported missing by his wife, Chinese authorities accused him of bribery in a lengthy statement stressing the importance of the country’s “anti-corruption struggle” and the need for “absolute loyal political character”. 

On Sunday, authorities said Meng was in the custody of the National Supervisory Commission (NSC), China’s new super-agency charged with investigating corruption throughout the government, which is overseeing his case.
Human rights advocates say Meng is likely being held in liuzhi or “retention in custody” – a form of detention used by the NSC that denies detainees access to legal counsel or families for as long as six months.
Liuzhi is meant to be an improvement on the previous shuanggui system, a disciplinary process within the ruling Chinese Communist party known for the use of torture and other abuses. 

Under liuzhi, family members are supposed to be notified.
Rights advocates say there are few indications liuzhi will be much better. 

The Chinese journalist Chen Jieren, who had accused a party official in Hunan province of corruption, has been detained since July by the NSC and denied access to his lawyer, according to Radio Free Asia.
In May, the driver of a low-ranking official in Fujian province died during interrogation after almost a month in liuzhi. 

When family members saw his body, his face was disfigured.
“Liuzhi ’is a very new system, but we can speculate pretty clearly [about] the kind of treatment people are subjected to,” says Michael Caster, a human rights advocate with Safeguard Defenders, a human rights NGO in Asia. 

“Prolonged sleep deprivation, forced malnourishment, stress positions, beatings, psychological abuse, threats to family members certainly, oftentimes leading to forced confessions.”
Meng’s case is the most high-profile yet for the NSC, which was created in March to expand China’s anti-corruption drive to people and entities outside the Communist party, including government ministries, state-owned companies, and people working in the public sector.
“Since its inauguration, however, the NSC has not nabbed any big ‘tigers’, so to speak,” said Dimitar Gueorguiev, assistant professor of political science at Syracuse University, where he focuses on Chinese governance. 

“Meng’s arrest seems like a powerful demonstration of China’s commitment to rooting out corruption, even when it can cost them the directorship of an important international vehicle,” he said.
Speculation for the reasons behind Meng’s swift downfall ranges from his access to sensitive information after a long career at the public security ministry to his tenure at Interpol, when the organisation revoked an international alert for Dolkun Isa, the president of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, which is critical of China’s treatment of ethnic Uighurs in East Turkestan. 

While Meng’s exact whereabouts are still unclear, rights activists say his fate is not.
“The formula is simple,” says Maya Wang, a senior China researcher for Human Rights Watch. “Like others forcibly disappeared before him, including human rights activists mistreated in custody by Meng’s public security ministry, he faces detention until he confesses under duress, an unfair trial, and then harsh imprisonment, possibly for many years.”