Chinese banker jailed for life in US$483 million corruption case, largest ever in country’s history
- ‘Significant damage’ inflicted through fraudulent loans, misappropriated repayments and the siphoning of bank funds to other accounts, court says
- Xu Guojun, former head of a Bank of China branch in Guangdong province, had been on the run for 20 years until his extradition from the US
A Chinese banker has been sentenced to life in prison in the country’s biggest-ever corruption case arising from the banking sector.
Xu Guojun, whose case involved more than US$483 million between 1993 and 2001, was convicted on charges of embezzlement and misappropriation of public funds by the Jiangmen Intermediate People’s Court in Guangdong province on Wednesday.
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The court ruled that Xu, in his role as bank chief, and his accomplices had embezzled more than 900 million yuan (US$125.4 million) in US dollars, Hong Kong dollars and German marks.
Their misdeeds transpired through fraudulent loans, misappropriated loan repayments and the siphoning of bank funds to other accounts, it added.
The group was also found to have misappropriated more than 1.4 billion yuan worth of bank money for other illegal purposes.
“The amount of their embezzlement is particularly large,” the court said. “They have caused particularly significant damage to the interests of the state and the people.”
Along with imprisonment, Xu was deprived of political rights for life. His personal assets were confiscated, and he was ordered to surrender all his illegal gains, according to a court statement.
Xu said he accepted the sentences and would not appeal, the court noted.
His main accomplices, Yu Zhendong and Xu Chaofan, were repatriated to China in 2004 and 2018, respectively. Yu was sentenced to a 12-year jail term in 2006, and Xu received a 13-year sentence in 2021.
The trio fled the country after Bank of China discovered a substantial deficit in the branch’s account. The men flew to Hong Kong and then Canada before eventually arriving in the US.
Two other suspects in the case were Xu Chaofan’s wife, Kuang Wanfang, and Lai Mingmin, a former head of the Bank of China in Jiangmen.
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Lai was responsible for ordering the branch to misappropriate at least US$21 million to cover the shortfall caused by his embezzlement, according to the court notice of his warrant.
The BOC Kaiping branch case is considered the largest to involve corruption and the banking sector since 1949. More than 2 billion yuan of the lost money has been recovered, local media reported.
