Two former Bank of China officials who fled with their families to the United States to escape embezzlement charges have rejected a plea bargain jointly arranged by Chinese and US authorities, a report said Tuesday.
The US State Department, working with the Chinese government, offered Xu Guojun and Xu Chaofan a deal whereby if they returned to the mainland to plead guilty, their wives would not be deported for immigration violations, the South China Morning Post said, citing one of the men's lawyers. But the two former managers at the Bank of China's Kaiping branch in the southern province of Guangdong rejected the deal, it said.
The pair, along with their wives, will now be tried by a federal court in Nevada in January on immigration and related conspiracy charges.
Bret Whipple, lawyer for Xu Guojun, said that even if his client won the immigration case he could be sent to Hong Kong on money laundering charges because the United States and Hong Kong had an extradition treaty.
Xu Guojun could then be sent to China, he told the newspaper.
Together with bank colleague Yu Zhendong, the two men are accused of stealing four billion yuan (494 million US dollars) from the state bank between 1992 and October 2001 in China's biggest bank fraud.
Only 3.55 million US dollars of the money has been recovered by the US government and returned to China.
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