China: A Chinese bureaucrat who embezzled €300,000, blew it all in a North Korean casino and then went on the run for three months has been jailed for 17 years by a local court in northeast China.
Cai Haowen was a mid-level transport official in the province of Jilin, just across the border from North Korea, who used his position to work up the necessary cash. He also received tens of thousands of euro in cash bribes to fund his high-rolling activities in the Stalinist enclave's casino.
In less than a year, Mr Cao blew all the money in 27 visits to the Hong Kong-built Emperor casino, which is in Raijin, in the North Korean free trade zone adjacent to his home in Jilin.
China, which bans gambling, has forbidden its citizens from visiting the casino amid revelations that stolen local government loot was turning up on the Emperor's tables.
North Koreans were not allowed to visit the Emperor and were too poor to gamble anyway.
Eyewitnesses have reported that at one stage all the cars parked outside the casino had Chinese local government number plates.
Raijin was one of three "free-trade zones" set up by North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to attract foreign investment.
Mr Cao's gambling activities were discovered last November and the high roller went on the run.
A high-profile, cross-border manhunt followed, which made big news on television and the dragnet included closing the Emperor hotel and casino.
Eventually, acting on a tip-off, police picked up the luckless Mr Cao in February on an overnight train from Beijing to Harbin, in the chilly northeastern province of Heilongjiang.
His detention was hailed as a big success for Beijing's much-trumpeted crackdown on gambling, which has been running since late last year and is part of a broader fight against corruption.
About 15,000 people suspected of gambling offences have been held since the crackdown began.
China has been working hard to weed out corruption as it has the potential to destabilise single-party rule in the Communist Party-run state.
Gambling is a serious vice in China. The richer it gets, the more temptation there is for newly rich bureaucrats to gamble away public funds. Some estimates say corrupt officials have spent billions of euro on the baccarat tables of casinos from Las Vegas to the former Portuguese enclave of Macau.
The campaign's first victory was the closure of an online gambling organisation, which led to the arrest of 33 people including 10 government officials.