After Peng Xufeng, head of a Chinese state-owned infrastructure and transportation company, left China around the time a corruption probe against him began, investigators there used well-tested tactics to try forcing him to return.
Security agents detained his brother, sister, two cousins and in-laws, according to court documents Mr. Peng filed. They placed his parents under surveillance and threatened to put his toddler son—left in the grandparents’ care—up for adoption, the filings say. A Chinese government official traveled to suburban Los Angeles where Mr. Peng had moved, the court filings say, and said agents stood ready to escort him and his wife home.
When Mr. Peng didn’t budge, the company he once headed tried a new strategy to get him to return to China. It sued.
In a lawsuit filed in California state court in September 2018, Changsha Metro Group Co. accuses Mr. Peng and his wife, Jia Siyu, of breach of fiduciary duty and other infractions in connection with what the suit says were about $19 million in bribes paid or promised to the couple and family members. As a government-owned enterprise, Changsha Metro doesn’t operate on a wholly commercial basis but must heed the dictates of the Communist Party.
Mr. Peng, who left China in March 2017, was No. 44 on China’s 2018 50-most-wanted-fugitive list that focuses on allegations of corruption. Senior U.S. government officials in recent weeks have described China’s fugitive search, which Beijing has called “Operation Fox Hunt,” as an effort to pursue political targets rather than just criminal ones.
