China’s banking regulator handed out its biggest financial penalty ever to China Guangfa Bank for fabricating guarantee documents on 1 billion yuan worth of bonds that went into default. The China Banking Regulatory Commission said Friday it confiscated illegal income and imposed fines on Guangfa totaling 722 million yuan ($109 million) for issuing fake guarantees, hiding bad assets and operating with lax internal controls that enabled wrongdoing, Caixin reports.
“The case involves multiple institutions, industries and markets,” the bank regulator said in a statement. “The case is severe and its social impact is extremely bad. It has rarely been seen in recent years.” The fine is equivalent to 7.6% of Guangfa’s 2016 net profit, according to the bank’s financial report. Guangfa’s misdeeds were exposed when 1.1 billion yuan worth of bonds issued by two subsidiaries of Cosun Group – a Guangdong province-based electronics manufacturer – went into default last December.