April 26, 2016
China faces the greater risk of money laundering and the financing of terrorist groups as the nation becomes more closely integrated into global markets, a senior official at the People’s Bank of China warned on Tuesday. “Risks of money laundering and terrorist financing are further increasing in line with cross-border uses of the yuan, the rise of internet financing and the opening of capital accounts,” said Hao Jinghua, deputy director at the anti-money laundering bureau at the central bank.
Hao told the annual meeting of the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists that China was among countries under growing pressure to fight financing operations by criminal groups. Increased concerns about terrorism and money laundering meant the issues went beyond the realms of economics and finance and affected social stability and national security, said Hao.
Tong Wenjun, a researcher at the central bank’s anti-money laundering monitoring and analysis centre, said on Monday at the forum that China must counter the challenge created by terrorist financing.
He said suspected terrorists operate business in coastal area such as the Yangtze and Pearl River Deltas in China as a front, leveraging banks, underground banks and remittance services abroad to transfer large amounts of money.
Separatists in the Xinjiang region of northwest China, where hundreds have died in terror attacks blamed on Islamist militants in recent years, tend to use bank networks to transfer small amounts of money, he said.