More than 340 in corruption net as China’s top prosecutors double down on tackling financial crime

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Hundreds of members of China’s finance sector were charged with professional crimes such as insider trading last year under renewed efforts to improve monitoring, according to the top prosecutor’s office.

In an article published on its website on Sunday, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) said more than 340 people in the sector were charged with corruption or dereliction of duty in 2023, a year-on-year increase of nearly 35 per cent.

Prosecutors worked on “preventing and defusing economic and financial risks”, the article said, citing a representative from the SPP’s case management office.

They targeted corruption in the financial sector, and crimes such as dereliction of duty and abuse of power committed by staff of financial oversight departments, it said.

The rule of law gives “important guarantees for development and the best business environment”, the SPP said, adding that procuratorial agencies across the country had worked on “providing rule of law safeguards to maintain an upturn and long-term growth of the country’s economy”.

In addition, prosecutors worked with the Ministry of Public Security to oversee the handling of 12 major financial fraud cases, and 16 major cases involving private equity funds. More than 300 individuals were charged for crimes related to securities, a year-on-year increase of 9.2 per cent, it said.

China’s top prosecutors promise financial crime crackdown is about to ramp up

Financial crimes will remain a high priority for prosecutors this year, with the SPP promising last month to extend the crackdown on offences such as insider trading and market manipulation.

The pledges follow President Xi Jinping’s call for the country’s judicial and law enforcement authorities to prevent and defuse “major security risks”.

Xi delivered the instructions during a two-day national conference in January for the country’s zhengfa departments – the political and legal authorities responsible for domestic security.

The report also comes as the country prepares to wrap up its weeklong annual parliamentary meetings, known as the “two sessions”, on Monday.

Summing up his agency’s efforts over the past year on Friday, SPP chief Ying Yong told the National People’s Congress, the top legislature, that prosecutors “resolutely maintained financial security”.

He said 27,000 individuals had been charged with financial fraud and financial management irregularities. Of those, 18,000 people were accused of fundraising fraud and illegally taking deposits from the public.

Ying’s work report also repeated pledges to strictly punish financial crimes to serve the “high-quality development of the financial sector” in the year ahead.

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Beijing has sought to strengthen oversight of the financial sector over the past year. The Communist Party is now the country’s top financial regulator, following the setting up of the Central Financial Commission last March.

In late October, Xi told the central financial work conference, a twice-a-decade policymaking gathering presided over by the president, that preventing and resolving financial risks must be an “eternal theme” for the Chinese government.

The SPP in December released guidelines listing what public prosecutors must do to tackle financial crimes.

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