A former Chinese official accused of corruption was handed over by the federal police of the United States to the custody of their Chinese counterpart on Friday at the Beijing International Airport.

Yu Zhendong, former president of the Kaiping city branch of the Bank of China in Guangdong, is suspected of embezzling a huge sum of bank money from 1993 to 2001.

Yu fled to America, and his case was investigated by local public procurators since October 2001.

China had asked on Nov. 5, 2001 for US criminal judicial aid on the basis of a UN pact formerly signed by China and the United States and close cooperation between law enforcement staff of the two countries was since carried out.

The US confiscated some of Yu's illicit money in December 2001 and took him into custody in December 2002. In September 2003, all the illicit money confiscated by federal police was returned to China.

Yu's repatriation was viewed as another successful case of Sino-US criminal judicial cooperation, also marking another major step forward in the investigation process of the Kaiping corruption case.

The repatriation was carried out in accordance with a United Nations anti-corruption pact signed in December 2003.

(Xinhua News Agency April 17, 2004)