A fugitive Chinese banker who helped embezzle US$485 million and stash some of the loot in B.C. banks has been deported from the United States after Beijing promised not to execute him.

Yu Zhendong, 41, was handed over to Chinese authorities in Beijing last week on the condition that he not be tortured or put to death, the US Embassy in Beijing said in a statement.

"The defendant and his alleged co-conspirators, all employees of the Bank of China, embezzled approximately $485 million from the Kaiping branch of the bank during the 1990s," it said.

Yu Zhendong in Beijing

The embassy said Yu was deported after he pleaded guilty in February to racketeering charges in a US court in Las Vegas, Nevada.

As part of the plea, it said, China agreed not to sentence Yu to more than 12 years in jail or to death.

Yu's two accomplices Xu Guojun and Xu Chaofan are still on the run.

The Asian Pacific Post in February 2000 reported that Yu and his two accomplices had entered Canada via Vancouver using false identities after stealing the money in a scandal that damaged the communist country's banking system.

The trio had deposited large amounts of cash into accounts at the Royal Bank Canada branch on Ackroyd Road in Richmond and the Vancouver area branches of the Hongkong Shanghai Banking Corporation and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.

Asian organize crime investigators tracking the three spotted them at a house in Richmond which was once used as a marijuana grow operation and later had information that they were hiding out in an area outside Hollywood in California.

In B.C. forensic accountants and the legal firm of Davis and Company hired by the Bank of China filed court applications to part of the loot siphoned by the trio.

The case against Yu was the largest embezzlement publicly disclosed by Chinese authorities.

The Bank of China is one of China's biggest state-owned commercial banks.

The 41 year old former bank manager was accused of embezzling the money between 1992 and 2001 from the Bank of China with the help of two co-workers.

The handover of Yu was highly unusual for the U.S. and China, which have no extradition treaty but are trying to improve co-operation between their law-enforcement agencies.

His plea agreement required U.S. authorities to obtain assurances China wouldn't sentence Yu to more than 12 years in prison and "he will . . . not be tortured or put to death," the statement said.

China frequently sentences defendants to death for non-violent offences such as tax evasion or embezzlement involving much smaller sums than in this case.

Yu's case was the latest development in a string of scandals that have hit China's banks and listed firms in the last few months, underscoring the risk facing investors eager to tap the world's fastest growing major economy.

China last year brought back 596 fugitive corrupt officials from overseas.

It is now desperately trying to get Canada to send home alleged smuggling kingpin Lai Changxing who is seeking refugee status in Vancouver.

Lai fled to Vancouver with his wife and three children in 1999, after China launched a campaign against corruption and smuggling.

China alleges Lai ran a six billion Canadian dollar smuggling ring in Fujian province that was protected by high ranking officials.

Several people associated with the case have already been executed but China has promised not to give Lai the death penalty should he be returned.