BEIJING: China CITIC Bank confirmed yesterday that it has discovered a fraud involving 969 million yuan (US$147.4 million) in funds illicitly drawn from its bill financing business.
The state-owned lender also said that police have been notified and that funds and related assets have been frozen.
A CITIC Bank employee working in Lanzhou allegedly conspired with other people between May and July to fake documents that were used as collateral to obtain a bankers’ acceptance bills, Bloomberg News said.
News of the fraud comes one week after the Agricultural Bank of China admitted it could lose as much as 3.9 billion yuan from a similar fraud.
Chinese financial publication Caixin reported that the case was tied to two AgBank employees, who illegally sold the bills of exchange to an unnamed third party, and then used the proceeds to invest in the stock market, which has dived since the middle of 2015.
China’s banks have been dogged by accusations of corruption. A recent crackdown on the financial industry has sparked investigations into several senior executives.
