The scandal with the frozen funds of Chinese bank customers unfolded. Now, however, instead of a thousand victims and $178 million, 400 thousand people have already suffered, and the losses amount to about $6 billion.
In the first case, Chinese authorities foiled a protest using a coronavirus tracking system. Officials simply turned off protesters’ digital #covid passes.
Then, about three months ago, four Chinese banks froze their customers’ deposits totaling $178 million. As a result, people were left without access to their savings, and companies were left without the ability to transfer funds to pay salaries to employees.
Aggrieved customers decided to organize a protest action. They chose the city of Zhengzhou in the central province of Henan as a rallying point, where demonstrators from all over the country headed. Actions, however, did not happen.
Before they traveled to Zhengzhou, the “health codes” used by authorities to track the coronavirus changed from green to red, which usually indicates infection or close contact. This statute prohibits citizens from using public transportation and visiting public places. After the code change, according to some protesters, the police started detaining them.
But this time it’s even more interesting. On July 10, Chinese residents protesting the freezing of their accounts by three banks in Zhengzhou reportedly stormed branches of the central bank.
Reports said some of the protesters were injured as Chinese law enforcement officers used brute force to disperse the angry crowd.
When the banks initially froze accounts in April, customers were told that this was done to facilitate the process of “upgrading” the institutions’ internal systems.
Two months later, however, accounts with nearly $6 billion (about 40 billion yuan) are still frozen and the banks have not informed their customers about the status of the so-called system upgrade.
The media added that a so-called “ministerial-level official” was involved in the case. However, one Twitter user named Anderson Copper called Lu Yi a “white-gloved business dragon” who stole the funds, according to him. Lu Yi has since left the country and is now in the US.
The state-run Global Times newspaper reported that three banks – Yuzhou Xinminsheng Village Bank, Shangcai Huimin Country Bank and Zhecheng Huanghuai Community Bank – were under investigation related to their “illegal fundraising activities”.
Since the story of the official who escaped to the USA is not described in the official reports of the banks on the “modernization” of the internal systems of the institutions, this whole incredible story with half a million victims may be a planned action aimed at creating a sense of insecurity among the population of the traditional banking system with a network of commercial banks. Which in turn should prompt bank customers to want to ditch their bank accounts in favor of the digital yuan (CBDC), which is controlled by the People’s Bank of China.
In the case of the loss of digital yuan from customers, the Central Bank is able to find every penny and block all accounts related to fraud.
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