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Guangdong Cracks down on Illegal Private Banks
Guangdong Police cracked down on five secret private banks in the province, capturing a total of 33 suspects last month, including several Hong Kong and Macao residents, according to police sources.
Addressing a press conference Tuesday, Zheng Shaodong,deputy director-general of Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Public Security, said the police raids are a heavy blow to the province's active illegal trading of foreign currencies via the underground private banks.
The secret private banks were targeted by police in a joint operation in the three cities of Foshan, Dongguan and Jiangmen in the prosperous Pearl River Delta, which borders Hong Kong and Macao.
More than 3.25 million yuan (US$391,566) and HK$1.1 million (US$141,388) worth of cash for illegal foreign currency trading were seized.
Also, several hundred private bank accounts,with a balance of more than 6.4 million yuan (US$771,084) and more than HK$5 million (US$642,674), were frozen for further investigations.
A mass of equipment and other materials of the underground private banks, including fax machines, trading bills, bank securers and banknote circulating machines were also seized.
Despite great progress made in the past few months, Zheng reaffirmed his bureau's determination to crack down on secret private banks, which have affected local normal financial operations in previous years.
Zheng urged investors from home and abroad in his province to do business via legal channels, and shun doing business with secret private banks.
Guangdong police have swooped upon a total of 319 financially related cases in the past four months, detaining a total of 447 suspects.
According to Zheng, it has retrieved economic losses of more than 49 million yuan (US$6 million) for the State.
Meanwhile, Guangdong police solved 127 tax fraud cases between April and July, detaining a total of 210 suspects and retrieving economic losses valued at 117.1 million yuan (US$14.1 million).
Police in Guangdong solved a total of 1,455 economic criminal cases, involving more than 14.7 billion yuan (US$1.77 billion) in the April-July period.
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