Chinese police, banks cooperate to fight telecom fraud

BEIJING - Chinese police, banks and banking regulators are working together to fight telecom fraud and protect citizens' rights.

The Ministry of Public Security (MPS) and the China Banking Regulatory Commission have jointly issued a document on the freezing and return of money involved in telecom and online fraud.

Last year, the MPS authorized local police in Beijing to establish an information platform on telecom and online fraud crackdown.

According to police sources, the platform has worked with the banking sector and frozen more than 400,000 fraud-related bank accounts involving over 1.1 billion yuan ($165 million).

Many Chinese banks have strengthened training of their staff to identify and intervene in risky transactions.

Ma Xudong, a fraud risk management official with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), said the ICBC is working with police and other banks in establishing a blacklist of suspicious accounts to identify risky transactions in a more effective manner.

"Most of the transactions involving the blacklisted accounts can by successfully managed," Ma said, noting that, as of the end of last month, the system had helped the bank intervene in more than 100,000 cases of fraud-related remittance, saving its clients from economic losses of over 1.46 billion yuan.

Chen Shiqu, a senior official of the MPS criminal investigation bureau, pledged further collaboration between police forces and financial institutions to protect citizens' rights in this regard.

Telecom fraud became a public sore point in China after a case last month in which Xu Yuyu, an 18-year-old high school graduate in Shandong Province, died of cardiac arrest after losing her tuition money to a telecom fraudster.