Rattled by protests, Chinese regulators to repay bank depositors
Henan's provincial banking and insurance regulator informed that individual customers who have deposits worth 50,000 Yuan (Rs 5,91,801) would start receiving the repayments from Friday. The remaining depositors have been paid in due course.
Rattled by the massive protests witnessed on the streets of the city of Zhengzhou in Henan province, Chinese banking regulators have announced that the depositors whose savings have been frozen since mid-April in four of the ailing rural banks will start receiving some money back from Friday.
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Henan's provincial banking and insurance regulator informed that individual customers who have deposits worth 50,000 Yuan (Rs 5,91,801) would start receiving the repayments from Friday. The remaining depositors have been paid in due course.
Beijing's attempts to rein in the spiralling debt and real estate sector woes have had a cascading effect on its banking sector. In the present case, an organised conspiracy saw certain individuals gaming the Chinese banking infrastructure, showing fake loans to siphon off depositors' money, and leaving the latter in the lurch.
Massive protests were seen outside the branch of the People's Bank of China -- the country's central bank -- in Zhengzhou in Henan province on Sunday, where anguished depositors sought action against those responsible for the mess and defreezing of their accounts.
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Videos of the protest, which managed to reach social media platforms, showed protesters being aggressively tackled by security guards and dragged away forcible from the steps of the central bank's branch.
On Sunday, the local police had taken into custody a 'number of suspects' linked to the "criminal gang" responsible for the bank mess. The banks in Henan province that were impacted by the scandal are Zhecheng Huanghuai Community Bank, the New Oriental Country Bank of Kaifeng, Shangcai Huimin County Bank and Yuzhou Xin Min Sheng Village Bank. In total, savings deposits worth 39 billion Yuan (over Rs 4.6 lakh crore) were frozen after the four banks went belly up.
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