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Flies and Tigers | 抓蝇打虎

Bank of Beijing executive probed
北京银行董事陆海军涉嫌严重违纪接受调查

Source: Shanghai Daily | February 4, 2015, Wednesday | Print Edition

A MEMBER of the board of Bank of Beijing is being investigated for serious disciplinary violations.

Lu Haijun is the latest banker to come under scrutiny as China’s anti-corruption drive turns to the finance sector.

News of the probe came after Mao Xiaofeng, president of China Minsheng Banking Corp, resigned last Saturday for “personal reasons” after media reports said he was being investigated by China’s anti-corruption watchdog.

President Xi Jinping has said the problem of graft is serious enough to threaten the Party’s survival and has vowed to go after powerful “tigers” as well as lowly “flies.”

Graft-busters have investigated business leaders and politicians alike, including former domestic security chief Zhou Yongkang and leading political adviser Ling Jihua.

Media reports have linked Mao’s fall with a probe into Ling, without giving specific details, except to note they both rose through the Communist Youth League.

Ling was put under police investigation for “serious violations of discipline” — a euphemism for graft — last month, following reports that he had attempted to cover up the lurid 2012 death of his son in a Ferrari car crash in Beijing.

Mao, 42, who was once a rising star in China’s banking world, has been president of the country’s largest privately owned bank since August. He was also the youngest chief of a listed bank on the Chinese mainland.

In 1986, when just 14, Mao enrolled at the Business School of Hunan University in Changsha, capital of central China’s Hunan Province.

He later obtained a master’s degree and a PhD at the same university, and a master’s degree in public administration from the School of Government at Harvard University.

Bank of Beijing’s Lu is the former chairman of Beijing Energy Investment Holding Co, one of the bank’s shareholders, according to a statement posted on the Shanghai stock exchange late on Monday.

The bank is operating normally, the statement said.

The Party’s graft-fighting body, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, said last Friday it was probing Lu, but at the time identified him only as the former chairman of Beijing Energy Investment. It did not elaborate.

Beijing Energy Investment holds a 5 percent stake in Bank of Beijing, which has a market value of 106 billion yuan (US$16.9 billion) and operates primarily within China.

Fitch Ratings said that neither probe would likely have a significant impact on the banks’ operations, pointing out that Lu sat on Bank of Beijing’s board only as a representative of its shareholder Beijing Energy Investment.

“However, these events at Minsheng and Bank of Beijing could be a precursor to a wider investigation into corporate management,” it said.

“If so, as far as the financial sector is concerned, it has the potential to enhance transparency and improve governance standards in the long run, which would be credit positive.”

Du Changchun, an analyst at Northeast Securities in Shanghai, said the investigations would probably not undermine investor confidence in banking shares.

“The chances of problems blowing up are slim,” he said.

The government’s probe into the financial sector comes as part of a broader campaign to root out corruption at major state-run conglomerates. Xinhua news agency said on Monday that anti-graft teams would be sent into 72 major state-run firms, including 19 in the financial and rail sectors.

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