The national banking industry regulator revealed Monday that eight local banks were punished for failing to stop two clients from misappropriating 4.46 billion yuan in loans.

 

The eight banks named are Bank of Beijing, the Beijing branch of Bank of Communications and the Shanghai outlets of China Merchants Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China CITIC Bank, Bank of China, China Industrial Bank and Shenzhen Development Bank.

 

Back in 2001, China Nuclear Engineering and Construction (Group) Corporation (CNECC) secured over 2.06 billion yuan in loans from the Bank of Communications and the Bank of Beijing under the auspice of building nuclear power stations. However, CNECC diverted 87 percent of these funds to invest in the securities market and bankroll its real estate subsidiaries and invest in the securities market, the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) revealed.

 

China Shipping (Group) Company also deceived banks about loans, using 2.4 billion yuan in loans secured from the six shamed banks to play the stock market in 2006.

 

In the CNECC case, 18 people from the Bank of Communications and the Bank of Beijing were punished and 12 of them were fined an undisclosed amount.

 

The Shanghai branch of China Merchants Bank was the hardest hit, being slapped with a 1.69 million yuan for slack supervision in the case of China Shipping (Group) Company. The other five all received fines of less than 500,000 yuan. Senior executives at the banks were also singled out by the CBRC who terminated their services.  

 

Wang Zhaowen, spokesman of the Bank of China, said that the bank has retrieved its loan and will not be affected by the case. He added that the bank would not enforce stricter measures to halt the funneling of loans directly into the stock market.

 

A senior executive with China Industrial Bank stated that the China Shipping (Group) Company loans were first transferred to a second bank before entering the stock market. He bemoaned the difficulty of establishing a clear map of capital flow, but said repeats of this incident could be avoided if the rules were followed.

 

The Chinese stock market has exploded since last year, rising from 1540 points in June 2006 to 4,253.35 points on Monday. Last Friday, the whole market value was estimated at 18 trillion yuan with over 100 million accounts inside the Shanghai and Shenzhen markets.

 

(Xinhua News Agency June 19, 2007)