Thieves targeting homes of officials aid in anti-graft investigations(2)

Earlier this year, the arrest of two thieves captured the public imagination after they provided detailed information about officials whose homes they had burglarized.

Fang Yunyun, 20, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in July 2014 but is serving out her sentence under house arrest due to her pregnancy. Tang Shuiyan, 30, is still awaiting trial.

While out on bail, Tang provided information regarding two corrupt officials from Hunan Province on the country's top disciplinary watchdog's website in August.

Fang also confessed in July to stealing more than 600 pre-paid shopping cards worth 1.5 million yuan from a banking regulation official in Anhui, the Shanghai-based news portal The Paper reported.

Their crimes was so lucrative that the pair sometimes bought airline tickets to travel to their next hit, Tang said.

Tang claimed that she only targeted corrupt officials and never picked the pockets of the general public. "They [officials] were also thieves, because they stole money just as I did," the Nanfang Weekly quoted Tang as saying.

The Beijing News found that 11 of 12 cases involving burglarized officials over the past decade were later investigated by top anti-graft teams.

Although some Internet users have characterized the thieves as modern day Robin Hoods, many debated whether the thieves deserved reduced sentences for their tip-offs or if they are providing an effective way to fight corruption.

Heroes or zeros?

Almost all those arrested for theft sought to receive reduced sentences by plea bargaining for information about officials. Very few of them succeeded, The Beijing News reported in August.

There is no legal basis to provide a reduced sentence to suspects even if they aid in anti-corruption campaigns, law experts explain.

Tian Wenchang, director of the Criminal Law Committee of the All-China Lawyers Association, told the newspaper that just because burglary and corruption are both crimes, they do not offset each other.

"Robin Hood stole from the rich to help the poor. Those thieves did not follow the same path," read a commentary published in the Xinhua Daily Telegraph in August.

The commentary argued if the suspects had not been caught by police and stood trial, they would have never aided anti-graft officials.

"They stole from alleged corrupt officials not because they wanted to contribute to the anti-graft campaign, but because they wanted easy money and have their crimes covered up," the commentary said.

"The law should not give a pass to thieves who give corruption tip-off as it will encourage burglary," Li Yongzhong, an anti-graft specialist, told The Beijing News.

Li added that anti-corruption campaign should rely more on corruption prevention systems rather than sheer luck.

Other experts suggested that Chinese authorities should require all officials to register their property and assets.

The reason why thieves target officials is because the officials keep their assets secret, according to a commentary on Beijing-based news portal gmw.cn in September.

"If officials were ordered to disclose their assets, anti-graft investigators could spot corruption before these so-called Robin Hoods," read the commentary.