China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange

(SAFE) and Ministry of Public Security (MPS) have been exerting efforts

to crack down on the transfer of illegal money, China Central Television (CCTV)

reported.

Statistics from SAFE show that from January to June this year, foreign

exchange administrative departments discovered more than 330 suspected money

laundering cases and passed them to MPS.

The cases involved more than 1 billion

US dollars.

According to China's newly issued anti-laundering law, the anti-laundering

department of the People's Bank of China, the bureau oneconomic crime of MPS and

the inspection and management departmentof SAFE are the three major institutions

responsible for money laundering supervision.

In the latter half of 2003, police in east China's Zhejiang Province and

SAFE Zhejiang branch found from their anti-launderinginformation system that an

account had undertaken 500 foreign exchange transactions within half a year, and

the highest transaction volume reached 17 million US dollars.

Following the trails, police found that the account's real owner was a

Macao casino boss, who got his money from the debts ofmainland gamblers.

"This is the first money laundering case that China has found by tracing

large sums of suspected foreign exchange accounts," said Chu Yumei, an official

with SAFE.

Source: Xinhua