Wang Xuebing, the former president of Bank of China dismissed for malpractices last month, paid for a new building for the bank with a single successful gold trade and made a sum equivalent to the bank's London branch from trading foreign exchange.
These are two of the revelations in the latest issue of weekly magazine San Lian Shenghuo , the first publication in the mainland to give readers an explanation for the downfall of China's most famous international banker, who was bank president from December 1993 until February 2000.
The magazine said that Wang was an accomplished trader with a lavish lifestyle of golf, French food and wine and karaoke.
His biggest coup as a trader was to finance the construction of a new skyscraper for the bank in Beijing's Fuchengmen area, which was its headquarters before it moved last year to a new office designed by famous architect I.M. Pei.
Since the central government would not pay, the bank had to find the money itself which Wang earned in a spectacular gold deal.
He was also an accomplished foreign-exchange trader, making in one year the equivalent of the annual profit of the bank's London branch, including, in one play, selling the Australian dollar so heavily that it pushed the currency down.
The magazine confirmed unofficial accounts that Wang had been moved from Bank of China to Construction Bank in February 2000, to facilitate an investigation by the United States Treasury's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) into malpractices at the bank's branches in the US.