How China’s biggest bank became ensnared in a sprawling money laundering probe

Part 1: When Chinese residents of Spain needed to get piles of illicit cash back home, police allege, they found an accomplice in the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. Confidential court filings, including wiretap transcripts, detail how the bank allegedly helped launder hundreds of millions of euros.

By ANGUS BERWICK and DAVID LAGUE Filed July 31, 2017, 11 a.m. GMT

El artículo en español
MADRID – A few minutes before 8 p.m. on Aug. 8, 2012, two Chinese living in Spain - a banker and her client - held a blunt phone conversation.

Wang Jing was a senior officer at the Madrid branch of the state-controlled Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. The client, Xu Kai, was an alleged top figure in an international money laundering group that was suspected of using the bank to transfer illegal income to China. The network was allegedly using multiple accounts in the name of Chinese residents of Spain, in some cases without their permission, to make the transfers. But there had been a hitch.

Earlier that day, banker Wang said, a woman had come to the branch to complain that transfers were being made from her account without her knowledge. Wang chided Xu, telling her to make sure that account holders used in the scheme were on board.

“You have to look out for yourself and make sure these people are obedient,” Wang warned. More complaints would lead to “problems” for the bank, Wang added.

In fact, the bank already had problems. Big problems. Spanish police were listening.

Wang’s warning to Xu is documented in confidential court filings that include wiretap transcripts from a series of police investigations starting in 2009 into Chinese organized crime in Spain. The Spanish authorities have said publicly they suspect these groups siphoned up to 1.2 billion euros ($1.4 billion) out of Spain to China between 2009 and the end of 2012.

The wiretaps and findings from police investigations ultimately led Spanish investigators to the front door of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, or ICBC - the world’s biggest bank by assets. On the morning of Feb. 17 last year, dozens of police officers burst into the bank’s Madrid branch and arrested Wang Jing and four other senior managers. Two more executives were arrested after the raid.

In a statement released in May last year, Spanish prosecutors said the giant Chinese state-run lender was a conduit for laundering tens of millions of euros in illegal funds from tax fraud and smuggling by “Chinese criminal organizations.” The sums laundered were so large, the prosecutors said, that “the damage to the socio-economic order and the national economy is clear.”

But beyond news of the arrests and a summary of allegations in the statement, little information has been revealed about the case.

Now, thousands of pages of confidential case submissions reviewed by Reuters, and interviews with investigators and former ICBC employees, provide the first detailed account of the alleged racket and show that the probe reaches high into the state-run bank’s European operation. The investigation has so alarmed Beijing that China’s top official in Madrid has publicly pressured Spanish officials to conclude the inquiry, warning that failure to do so would harm economic relations.