The former head of a central bank branch in the eastern city of Jinhua is under investigation for allegedly taking bribes from a failed brokerage, Caijing magazine said yesterday.
Zhou Caikang, 44, who was deputy chief and then chief of the People's Bank of China branch in Jinhua between 2001 and 2003, was detained in May by the Central Disciplinary Commission of Zhejiang province, the report said.
The Jinhua branch of the central bank said that it would not accept any questions. The People's Bank of China did not mention the case on its website.
While corruption is rife in China's government and business, it is rare for an official of the central bank to be arrested.
Beijing has given the central bank an organisational structure that is not based on the country's cities and provinces, in an attempt to make its officials more independent and less vulnerable to bribery and corruption.
The failed brokerage, Kinghing Trust and Investment, was closed on December 31 last year and its management transferred to the state-run China Jianyin Investment, after regulators found that it had violated brokerage rules and run up debts totalling more than four billion yuan.
On December 29, five senior managers of Kinghing were detained in Jinhua by the Central Disciplinary Commission and taken to Hangzhou, the provincial capital, for investigation.