Sixty banks closed in Guangdong

1 April 2002

The People's Bank of China has closed 60 illegal banks in Guangdong province in the past 14 months, South China Morning Post reported. An official at the central bank's Guangzhou branch said that the banks had offered customers a means of obtaining more foreign exchange than they could obtain at state-owned banks and provided services at better rates. He also said that they had sold foreign currency to people going abroad to gamble, which banks in China were not allowed to do.

The banks, most of which were based in the Pearl River delta region, had combined deposits of Yn59m.