Global hunt highlights scale of graft in China, by David Lague

The missing funds were transferred from the Bank of China branch at Kaiping to Hong Kong and invested in property or laundered through casinos in Macao and Las Vegas … the three managers channeled $212 million from the bank to Ever Joint between 1992 and 2001 in 244 transfers. In 1998 alone, $95 million from Bank of China Kaiping was credited to Ever Joint … there were a series of multimillion-dollar transfers arranged from Hong Kong to the accounts of Las Vegas casinos.

Although the Chinese authorities waited six months to announce that the theft had been discovered, Bank of China customers in the Kaiping area knew almost immediately that something was amiss.

On Oct. 17, 2001, depositors started lining up at 20 Bank of China branches in the Kaiping area. The authorities, who have long feared that a run on China’s fragile state-owned banks could spark widespread political unrest or a financial crisis, responded by trucking in cash from the provincial capital, Guangzhou.