Half of money still missing after rogue businessman's bad bets in futures market
Bank of China, the mainland's second-largest commercial lender, has been hit by a fresh scandal as it prepares for a multibillion-dollar Hong Kong listing by June.
Rogue businessman Zhu Dequan, conspiring with officials at a BOC branch outlet in Shuangyashan, Heilongjiang province, fraudulently obtained 96 bank bills and cashed them at other banks for 914.6 million yuan over the past three years, Beijing-based Caijing magazine reported yesterday.
The bank might lose more than 400 million yuan in the fraud and five bank officials, including the former head and deputy head of BOC's Simalu sub-branch in the city, had been arrested in connection with the crime, Caijing and mainland banking sources said.
It was another significant scandal to hit the lender following reports early last year that Gao Shan, the former head of a BOC sub-branch in the Heilongjiang provincial capital of Harbin, had absconded with more than one billion yuan of clients' deposits.
The Shuangyashan incident came to light a week after BOC filed preliminary documents with the Hong Kong stock exchange for its H-share offering and could affect investor sentiment.
'It doesn't matter that the amount of money involved was fairly small,' an analyst at a western bank said yesterday. 'It's the frequency of such things that makes it a hidden risk.'