The president of the Bank of China’s Macao branch has apparently been detained by authorities in Beijing, after disembarking a flight from the SAR, according to news first reported by Caixin Global and cited by Hoje Macau.
Caixin Global says Jia Tianbing has been unreachable by phone since Sunday.
His apparent arrest follows that of Jiang Yusheng, a former chairman of the Macao branch of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, who was reportedly taken into custody earlier this month. It has since been made public that Jiang is under investigation by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection for alleged disciplinary and legal violations.
Caixin Global noted that both men “were likely to have been ensnared in the country’s long-running crackdown on corruption in finance.”
[See more: ICBC executive Jiang Yisheng reported ‘missing’ in relation to Macao loan probe]
Jia accompanied a Macao delegation from the National Committee of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, led by former Chief Executive Edmund Ho, on a tour of the Hengqin on 11 July, but was notably absent from a recent Bank of China meeting.
Earlier this month, ICBC’s Jiang was arrested in connection to a real estate loan granted to the disgraced Macao-based billionaire David Ng Lap Seng’s development company during the banker’s 2018 to 2023 tenure.
According to Caixin Global, ICBC has also taken disciplinary action against Jiang due to what it said were flaws around the Sun Kian Ip Group’s loan, used to fund the Windsor Arch luxury residential development. In June, the Court of First Instance announced that ICBC had applied to seize assets belonging to Ng, his son and their affiliates to recover outstanding debts.
The same court sentenced Ng to a 15-year prison term for organised crime and money laundering in 2023, though the term has since been drastically reduced. Ng, once known as one of the region’s richest individuals, also spent time in a US jail for bribing diplomats to help him build a conference centre in Macao intended for UN use.
