From Bloomberg:
Two former managers at Bank of China Ltd., jailed in Las Vegas on racketeering and money-laundering charges stemming from the alleged theft of $485 million, say they’re being framed to cover up corruption and incompetence at the state-owned lender.
“The Chinese government made up evidence and used it to make me look responsible,” Xu Chaofan said in an Aug. 10 jailhouse interview. “We feel we’re scapegoats,” said former colleague Xu Guojun, who’s in a separate detention center. “The bank’s management was in turmoil and there were huge losses to account for.”
The two men, in their first interviews since fleeing China five years ago, said they’re being blamed for lax supervision at China’s second-biggest lender. Their trial will offer a rare look inside a banking system that has been plagued by inadequate internal controls, graft and theft, said Victor Shih, a China scholar at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. [Full Text]
See previous CDT post Global hunt highlights scale of graft in China