During a routine trip to Bank of China to send money back to the fatherland, we discovered that the former ceiling on funds that can be sent in one day - $500, without exhaustive documentation from one's employer - has been raised in conjunction with Expo. Customers can now send up to $1,500 per day to foreign bank accounts. As was the case before, an administrative commission of RMB 200 applies, though as much as $10,000 can be sent (over a period of several days, naturally) before a second fee is applied. At this time, it's unknown as to whether these changes will expire once the Expo ends, but we plan on transferring as much dough as possible prior to November 1, just in case. more ›

Two ex-Bank of China managers (and their wives) have been given lengthy sentences for their parts in an elaborate scheme to swindle money out of China and move to the United States. The couples laundered money from China into false corporations and personal accounts in Hong Kong, Canada and the U.S. and obtained false identities and entered into fake marriages to settle in Las Vegas. They were eventually arrested in 2004 and found guilty last year. Xu Chaofan and Xu Guojun, the two banking masterminds, were given 25 and 22 years each respectively. Their wives both got eight years each. Still, their sentences sound much more preferable to the fate of a third manager, Yu Zhengdong, who actually helped authorities catch the wayward bankers - despite his cooperation with investigators, he is now languishing in a Chinese jail. Source: BBC more ›

NTDTV speaks to Natan Galkovitch, one of 100 victims of terror in Israel who are now suing the Bank of China for not preventing money that was transferred to the Hamas, and Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, an attorney for the plaintiffs. Among the claims of the suit:

...beginning in July 2003, the Bank of China executed dozens of wire transfers for the terrorist groups totaling several million dollars. Many of the transfers were initiated in the Middle East, sent to branches in the U.S. then to an account at a bank branch in Guanzhou, China, the suit said. more ›

According to the Wall Street Journal, a lawsuit against the Bank of China has been filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, claiming that Bank of China transferred millions of dollars for terrorist groups bent on attacking Israel, ignoring demands by Israeli counterterrorism officials to halt the practice. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of more than 100 victims of terrorism in Israel and alleges that the money was transferred for the militant groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Iran and Syria, and processed through Bank of China's branches in the U.S. and China. "I don't know about the matter," Wang Zhaowen, spokesman for the bank, told Dow Jones Newswires. According to one of the plaintiffs' attorneys, Bank of China now has 20 days to respond to the lawsuit under U.S. legal procedures. more ›