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CCTV Accuses Bank of China of Money Laundering, Helping Elite Move Abroad

Posted: 07/9/2014 5:57 pm

bank of chinaCCTV has broadcast a report accusing the Bank of China of engaging in money laundering to aid wealthy Chinese citizens emigrate abroad, reports the SCMP.

The money laundering is allegedly being done through a money transferring system at the Bank of China called You Huitonghe. Through the system, wealthy Chinese are able to send an unlimited amount of funds overseas after applying for immigrant investor programs.

The total amount involved is unknown, but one Guangdong branch has reportedly sent 6 billion yuan (US$970 million) overseas. By law, a Chinese citizen isn’t allowed to move more than US$50 thousand out of the country per year.

The CCTV report went undercover at an emigration information conference at a five-star hotel in Beijing’s Central Business District. There, an employee from the Shuguang Xili branch of the Bank of China was supposedly caught on video saying:

What we help you do is exchange large sums of money into foreign currency. You can do it all in one step. 

The Bank of China employee was to have brazenly said:

We don’t care where your money comes from, or how you made it. In any situation, we can help you take care of it and move it outside the country.

The Bank of China employee further described the process of laundering the money:

The Renminbi is first transferred to a Guangdong branch, then the currency is exchanged (into another currency). This high exchange rate is accomplished with the cooperation between us and the immigration intermediaries. We won’t tell anyone else. It’s only when the client himself comes asking questions that we’ll finally start talking.

Immigration intermediaries are said to have conspired with the Bank of China in order to obfuscate the source of the funds. An immigration intermediary summed up Bank of China’s role:

If you want to apply in an investor program, you will have to put your money through the Bank of China. To stay over there and prosper, if you have the need, then just go to them directly.

Photo: Planet Minecraft

Haohao

Police raid hotels and casinos in Macau after spate of attacks on guests, some fatal

Posted: 08/6/2012 9:00 am

Macau saw a huge police sting on August 3 and 4 that harkened back to the triad days in the late 1990s when the enclave was still a Portuguese territory.

Bloomberg has reported that Macau police orchestrated a series of raids on casinos and hotels in a joint-operation with law enforcement officials in the mainland and Hong Kong after a spate of attacks on guests, some with fatal consequences.

Nevertheless, the mass crackdown is part of a wider operation known as “Thunderbolt,” which has seen police quiz over 1,300 people and detain 149.

Au Kam-sun, a Macau lawmaker, told Bloomberg:

“Crime comes inevitably with casinos… The police make a clean-up every now-and-then to keep the triads in check.”

That may be so, but the last few months have seen violent crime return to pre-handover days.  Bloomberg sums up the recent incidents:

Ng Man-sun, the largest shareholder of Amax Holdings Ltd. (959), was beaten in a restaurant at a casino operated by his company, the New York Times reported on June 28. The Macau New Century Hotel stopped accepting guests after the assault because “certain unidentified persons” had been staying there for a long time, according to the South China Morning Post on July 3.

Ng, also known by his nickname “Market Wai,” requested that eight of the nine directors of Amax’s board be removed and replaced by five new directors, according to a company statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange on July 16.

The attack on him was followed by the killing of a Chinese woman in a neighborhood near the Venetian Macau casino, and the murder of two men at the Grand Lapa Hotel, which is operated by Mandarin Oriental International Ltd. (MAND), according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

The question now is whether the cleanup will be effective.

Haohao
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