Update | Like Bank of China, Citic Bank also offers service branded 'money laundering' by CCTV

A day after Bank of China (BOC) was accused by the state broadcaster of breaking foreign exchange rules by helping people take money out of the country, it has emerged a second state bank has also been offering the service.

Industry sources told the South China Morning Post yesterday that China Citic Bank - controlled by the Citic Group, which in turn is directly controlled by the State Council, China's cabinet - also facilitated the movement of currency overseas, including Hong Knog.

"It is definitely not an illegal business," said one source.

"Both BOC and Citic Bank have been able to do this business only after they got approval from the Guangzhou branch of the People's Bank of China. So the PBOC definitely knows what the business is about," said the source, who declined to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media.

"If there is any problem, it should not be a problem about whether this business is legal or illegal but more about how exactly the business is done, especially about internal risk controls and customer background checks at those banks."

Repeated phone calls by the Post to Citic Bank went unanswered.