"Underground money bank" is an organization that engages in illegal financial activities such as buying and selling foreign exchange, cross-border remittance, and handling fund payment and settlement business without authorization for the purpose of illegal profit, and is a veritable "financial black hole".
Recently, the Lanzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau in Gansu Province cracked a case of "illegal operation" in the form of "knocking" in foreign exchange trading, and with the close coordination of the public security organs of 14 provinces and municipalities involved in the case, including Shandong, Guangdong, Heilongjiang, Jiangxi and Fujian, it took down an "underground money bank" network involving 2 billion yuan and more than 2,500 people in one fell swoop.
Elaborate camouflage The undercurrent of "underground finance" is surging
With the rapid development of the globalized economy and information technology, underground money banks have become increasingly rampant, lawbreakers engaged in illegal exchange have emerged one after another, and the methods of crime have been constantly renewed.
In May this year, the police of the Economic Investigation Detachment of the Lanzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau discovered clues in an inconspicuous transfer clue amid a large number of clues.
"When we sorted out the clues, we found this abnormal transfer record, and the transfer method was particularly similar to the 'knock-type' underground bank, so we increased our efforts to further dig into the clue." Wang Xuenong, captain of the four major teams of the Economic Investigation Detachment of the Lanzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau, introduced to reporters.
According to the police, "knock-type" underground money banks, also known as "hedging types" underground money banks, criminals engage in cross-border fund exchange activities, collude with overseas personnel, and assist others in cross-border remittance transactions and illegal foreign exchange purchase activities. In order to better conceal themselves and evade detection, most of them adopt the method of domestic delivery of RMB, foreign currency cutting abroad, and non-cross-border exchange of funds in form, so as to realize the substantive exchange and cross-border transfer of funds.
For example, when a domestic customer needs funds to go abroad, transfer the onshore RMB to the domestic account designated by the underground bank, and after receiving the RMB in China, the underground bank notifies its overseas organization to transfer the corresponding foreign currency to the overseas account designated by the domestic customer, and vice versa.
In order to find out the "financial black hole" that may be hidden behind the clues, the Lanzhou public security immediately set up a "May 23 Special Case Group" to carry out comprehensive and meticulous investigation and detection of the case.
"Intelligence game" clears the fog
In the early stage of investigation, the police found through research and judgment that there were many transfer accounts, and they repeatedly pressed the diagram, but the source account found each time was not the target account they were looking for.
The police quickly adjusted their investigation ideas, collected numerous clues to establish a topological model diagram, connected the undertaking points of all capital flows through topological lines, looked for the intersection with the most lines, and finally locked a key account through the collision and judgment of the junction account: a man's bank account surnamed Zhao.
In order not to startle the snakes, the police carefully surveyed the transaction process, capital flow and related relationship network of the head of the household, Zhao Moucheng, and found that Zhao Moucheng set up a remittance center in Hong Kong very early, opened a large number of accounts in the name of himself and his relatives, and carried out cross-border remittance and exchange for customers for a long time, earning the difference and commission.
After verification, his personal account alone has recently reached tens of millions of yuan.
On September 12, the police arrested criminal suspects Zhao Moucheng, Ma Moucai, and Ma Mouming in Kunming City, Yunnan Province, and seized a number of various online banks, U shields, more than 20 savings cards and credit cards of major banks, and 7 mobile phones at the scene, and then frozen 124 bank accounts and seized more than 90 million yuan.
"Arresting suspects is only the first step, and the funding channels and processes for collecting evidence are the most critical and difficult in the case." Police officer Zhang Yixing said while flipping through the case file.
For example, in Zhao's various capital platforms, it was found that there were more than 200,000 transaction flows alone, and many funds were split and merged dozens of times in order not to be easily traced, and the transaction flow was very complex, and it was necessary to put the pieces together to become a complete "criminal evidence map".
There are cases in the case The "cluster campaign" has been wiped out
In order to put down this underground bank network in one fell swoop, the Lanzhou public security applied to the Ministry of Public Security to launch a national cluster campaign, and at the same time, the police divided into multiple groups and rushed to Shandong, Guangdong, Heilongjiang and other provinces and cities to investigate and collect evidence.
Inside and outside the province, the Lanzhou public security assisted the police in Guangzhou, Yunnan, Yantai, Jilin, Liaoyuan, Gansu, Baiyin, and other places in Guangdong to discover a number of criminal suspects involved in defrauding export tax rebates, helping information network criminal activities, illegal operations, and falsely issuing value-added tax invoices, and thoroughly cracked other "cases within cases" involved in the "May 23 illegal business case."
After preliminary interrogation, the main suspect in this case, Zhao Moucheng, confessed to the criminal fact that he had carried out illegal business, and the other persons involved in the case have been transferred to the foreign exchange administration department for further handling because they violated the state foreign exchange control regulations.
"In recent years, underground banks in the mainland have developed from individual and family operations to corporatization and collectivization; From initially concentrated in coastal areas, it has spread to the western inland provinces, and its business network covers the whole country and even abroad. Jin Jianghai, head of the Economic Investigation Detachment of the Lanzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau, introduced that the Lanzhou Public Security Economic Investigation Department has actively built a three-dimensional strike mode of "online and offline integration, information resource sharing, integrated coordination of police branches, and social force assistance in defense", and made every effort to crack down on the chain and end network of underground money banks and other economic crimes involving the masses.
Lanzhou public security reminds that please find a legal and reliable financial institution to deal with the exchange of foreign exchange, do not take chances, any enterprise and individual, once found to have a transaction with an underground money bank, will be investigated by the public security department and the administrative punishment of the foreign exchange management department.
Source: China Chang'an Net