What’s new: Fan Yifei, a former deputy governor of China’s central bank, was arrested for suspected bribery and is now facing criminal investigations, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the country’s top prosecutor, said Tuesday.
Fan, who became the deputy head of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) in early 2015 and oversaw the fintech and payment sectors, is one of the highest ranking financial officials involved in the country’s sweeping corruption crackdown.
Caixin learned that investigators are tracing various cases linking to Fan.
In January, Li Guo, former deputy head of the PBOC’s secretary bureau, was also detained by anti-corruption officials for investigation, Caixin has learned. Li served as Fan’s secretary for more than seven years since 2015.
Guo Shuqing, the central bank’s Communist Party chief, urged employees Tuesday in an internal meeting to draw lessons from the cases including Fan’s. Anti-graft investigations in the financial sector are not done, Guo said, according to a PBOC statement.
Background: Fan, 58, was expelled from the Communist Party and removed from official posts earlier this month.
He was investigated by the party’s anti-graft officials in November and later accused of taking bribes and abusing power. Investigators found that Fan exchanged power for money “over a long period of time” and accepted a “huge amount” of bribes to benefit others with loan and financing favors, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said in a statement in early June.
Contact reporter Han Wei (weihan@caixin.com)
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