The story appears on

Page A7

December 23, 2010

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

Home » Nation

12 get jail sentences for illegal money exchange

TWELVE people, including eight Vietnamese, have received jail terms of up to three years for operating illegal banking services.

The transactions were worth 7.2 billion yuan (US$1.08 billion), China News Service reported yesterday.

The Intermediate People's Court of Fangchenggang City in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region also fined some of the defendants.

Sentences ranged from one year and eight months to three years in jail. Eight Vietnamese nationals were also given fines from 150,000 yuan to 500,000 yuan. They will be deported from China after serving their prison sentences, the court said.

The defendants were accused of running a number of underground banks in several cities along the China-°?Vietnam border. They provided illegal currency exchange services from late 2004 to early 2008.

Most of their clients were businessmen from China, Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries, who profited from increasing cross-border trade, but were reluctant to go through the relatively complicated procedures required by legal banks, China News Service said.

Through the illegal service, a client could funnel money via one of the defendant's legal bank accounts and receive the converted money based on a rate the two parties agreed upon in advance.

The defendants usually charged clients 20 yuan to 30 yuan for each transaction, about half of the fee charged by commercial banks.




 

Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

沪公网安备 31010602000204号

Email this to your friend