Chinese authorities have delivered a massive blow to organized financial crime networks, announcing the dismantling of over 200 professional criminal gangs and the uncovering of nearly 30 billion yuan ($4.27 billion) in illicit funds. The sweeping nationwide operation, revealed at a Ministry of Public Security press conference on Thursday, represents one of the most significant financial crime crackdowns in recent years.
The six-month coordinated campaign, jointly initiated by the Ministry of Public Security and the National Financial Regulatory Administration, targeted 17 key provinces and municipalities across China. Investigators filed more than 1,500 cases as part of a comprehensive effort to purify the country’s financial market ecosystem from illegal and quasi-illegal financial activities.
Hua Liebing, Director of the ministry’s Economic Crime Investigation Bureau, detailed the sophisticated nature of these criminal operations. ‘Prominent financial consumption disputes in recent years have fueled the proliferation of illegal intermediary chaos,’ Hua stated. ‘These operations have evolved into well-established industrial chains that severely infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of financial consumers.’
The criminal networks demonstrated alarming levels of organization, featuring complete chains covering false advertising, regulatory evasion tutorials, standardized script customization, forgery of counterfeit certificates, and professional negotiation representation services. The schemes have attracted increasingly professional participants, including lawyers and collection agency professionals who have joined criminal groups driven by profit motives.
Criminal methodologies have grown notably more covert, with offenders leveraging advanced technologies and AI-generated tools to evade detection. Hua emphasized that as regulatory pressure intensifies, these financial crimes are expected to become even more hidden with increasingly sophisticated and variable modus operandi.
The Ministry has pledged to strengthen collaboration with financial regulators, maintain regular crackdowns and deterrence measures, participate in rectifying illegal financial intermediaries, and contribute to the high-quality development of China’s financial industry.