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China puts 4 to death for $15M in bank fraud
BEIJING (Reuters) - China executed four people, including employees of two
of its Big Four state banks, for fraud totaling the equivalent of about $15
million, the Xinhua state news agency said Tuesday, amid the country's
high-profile campaign against financial crime.
The executions come after a string of arrests in white-collar crime as China
prepares to sell shares in its big banks. The latest cases involved China
Construction Bank, due to raise up to $10 billion in an initial public
offering next year, and Bank of China, which is moving toward an IPO worth
up to $4 billion.
Wang Liming, a former accounting officer at China Construction Bank in the
province of Henan, worked with others to steal $2.4 million from the bank,
Xinhua said. An accomplice, Miao Ping, was also executed. Another
Construction Bank employee, Wang Xiang, was executed for stealing $2.4
million in an unrelated case. Liang Shihan, an official at the Bank of
China's branch in the city of Zhuhai, helped cheat his bank out of $10.3
million, Xinhua said.
Xinhua did not say how the four were killed. China, which executes more
criminals than the rest of the world combined, usually puts inmates to death
with a gunshot to the back of the head, but has recently experimented with
lethal injections.
The debt-laden state banks have been involved in other fraud scandals as
Beijing tries to clean them up ahead of 2007, when the sector opens fully to
foreign rivals as part of pledges made to the World Trade Organization.
China arrested the former chief of the Bank of China's Hong Kong branch for
corruption in February. Last December, the former head of Construction Bank
was sentenced to 12 years in prison for taking bribes. China injected a
combined $45 billion into Construction Bank and Bank of China in 2003 to
help reform the sector and prepare for the IPOs.
The number of executions in China is a secret. Reports range from 5,000 to
10,000 a year, many for murder, but also for corruption and crimes as minor
as bottom-pinching. Experts have called for a "kill fewer, kill carefully"
policy for non-violent crimes.
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