Bank of China governor says they must do more to improve internal controls
The latest scandal to rock the Bank of China proves that Chinese lenders are not moving fast enough to improve internal controls, the central bank governor said yesterday.
However, People's Bank of China governor Zhou Xiaochuan stopped short of calling for the nation's largest lenders to postpone their long-awaited listings until the problem was fixed.
'I can see gradual improvements [in banks' internal controls],' he said on the sidelines of the National People's Congress. 'However, we feel the pace of improvements could be further accelerated.'
Rogue businessman Zhu Dequan, with the aid of BOC officials, fraudulently obtained 96 bank bills from a sub-branch of the mainland's second-largest lender in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang .
They then cashed the bills at other banks for 914.6 million yuan, Beijing's Caijing magazine reported earlier this week.
It was the second large scandal to hit the BOC. Gao Shan, a bank official in the same province, absconded with about a billion yuan of clients' deposits early last year, triggering an industry-wide campaign to step up internal controls.
