Wen | Yu Yan
Ed. | Wu Ge
Produced by Yuguan Finance
Fan Yifei, the first "tiger" of the 20 major financial companies, entered the second step of the "five-step down" - "double opening" after seven months of "falling off the horse".
On June 9 (yes, Friday again), CCDI issued its second announcement about Fan Yifei.
In this announcement, Fan Yifei's reasons for "falling from the horse" are listed in as many as seven articles, covering everything from private morality to public power. The breadth and severity of the wording have surpassed Tian Huiyu, an old colleague of his China Construction Bank Co., Ltd. ("CCB", 601939.SH 0939.HK) and former president of China Merchants Bank.
Fan Yifei has also become another example of corruption who "relies on finance to eat finance" and "makes money out of money".
Seven months ago, on November 5, 2022, a CCDI announcement announced that Fan Yifei had "fallen from the horse". He became the 13th person in the central banking system with publicly available information to "fall off" in 2022, and the highest-ranking one, setting a record for the highest level of a fallen person in the central banking system.
In the public's impression, Fan Yifei has always appeared as a scholar-type official, seemingly with little copper stench, and the central bank system has always been regarded by the outside world as a "clean water Yamen".
Fan Yifei's "fall from the horse" broke this illusion to a certain extent.
Shortly after Fan Yifei's "fall," rumors spread that his old subordinate, Xie Zhong, secretary of the party committee and chairman of the Interbank Market Clearing House Co., Ltd. (the "Shanghai Clearing House"), had been taken away for investigation and removed from office the following month, disappearing from public view.
Hu Youlian, Fan's old classmate and former president of Bank of Shanghai during the days of CCB and Bank of Shanghai Co., Ltd. (Bank of Shanghai, 601229.SH), committed suicide by jumping off a building shortly after.
Two months after Fan Yifei "fell from the horse" (January 18, 2023), his former secretary and deputy director of the Central Bank Secretariat, Li Guo, also followed in his footsteps and "fell from the horse".
Since 2019, Fan Yifei's "fallen off" in his field has accounted for about eighty percent of the total number of "fallen off" in the central banking system.
The secret circle surrounding the scholarly official is gradually collapsing. Those that circulate in this "hidden corner" will be exposed to the sun one after another as the parties fall one after another.
After Fan Yifei "fell off the horse", the life behind his official resume was also excavated.
There really is nothing new under the sun. This is just another story of a grassroots counterattack.
The times gave Fan Yifei the opportunity to develop, allowing him to grow from an ordinary employee at the grassroots level of the bank to a deputy ministerial-level financial supervision cadre. In an almost legendary way, he creatively embarked on a road to break down class divisions, grasped the olive branch of fate, and reached the peak of his life through his own efforts and left and right.
However, at the height that everyone looked up to, he gradually relaxed his self-restraint, gradually forgot his original intention, lost himself, and fell into selfish desires.
Fan Yifei is the first "tiger" of the 20 major financial institutions, but not the only "tiger" (followed by Liu Liange, former chairman of Bank of China of the same level, and Li Xiaopeng, former chairman of Everbright Group).
Viewers have become numb to the flood of anti-corruption announcements and see it as the norm. How can financial executives "hold their souls, be responsible, and stand up to scrutiny"? This is probably a long-term issue.
"Falling Horse Club"
On this list of "crimes", Fan Yifei touched on seven major issues:
1. Losing ideals and beliefs, abandoning the original mission, indifferent political awareness, resisting organizational censorship, and engaging in superstitious activities;
2. Ignoring the spirit of the eight regulations, accepting banquets, travel, golfing and other activities for a long time in violation of regulations, participating in banquets at public funds in violation of regulations, accepting gifts and gifts, and entering and leaving private clubs;
3. Seek benefits for others in job arrangement, post adjustment, etc.;
4. Obtaining remuneration for officials who are not honest, conniving at relatives who do not actually work, and engaging in power trading;
5. Interference in law enforcement activities in violation of regulations;
6. Moral corruption and improper family style;
7. Without the bottom line of discipline, they have the audacity to "rely on finance to eat finance", "make money out of money", engage in power and money transactions in the name of "investment" for a long time, use the convenience of their position to seek benefits for others in loan financing, enterprise operation, etc., and illegally accept huge amounts of property.
Fan Yifei has more of these problems than his old colleague Tian Huiyu. Engaging in superstition, moral wealth, eating and drinking with public funds, taking huge bribes, trading power and color, and trading power for money are almost the version of "all five drugs".
These words, applied to this seemingly simple and simple financial executive, give people a very strong sense of contrast.
At present, it is not known whether Fan Yifei's violation of law and discipline occurred at the stage of the central bank, CCB or Bank of Shanghai, or all three?
From the current point of view, whether it is the central bank or CCB, the financial anti-corruption efforts are very large, and the number of "fallen off" people, especially CCB, is enough to form two prison football teams.
During his tenure as deputy governor of the central bank, Fan Yifei was in charge of the Department of Payment and Settlement, the Bureau of Currency, Bullion and Bullion, and the Department of Science and Technology. There are actually traces of its "fall from the horse": in these departments under its responsibility, many people have fallen before.
For example, Xu Zhen, former chairman of Shangqing Institute, Cui Yu, former chairman of CityBank Clearing Service Company, Liu Yongcheng, vice president of Rural Credit Bank Fund Clearing Center Co., Ltd., Yang Mingji and Tao Xiaofeng, two chairmen of Huida Asset Custody Co., Ltd., Chen Zhiyang, chief clerk of the payment and settlement department of Shenyang Branch, Wang Yonghong, former director of the Shanghai Science and Technology Department of the Central Bank, Zhan Hao, former director of the Technical General Department of the Financial Information Center, and Gong Shiliang, former chairman of China Banknote Guoding. He Lin, former general manager of the Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation, Chen Yaoming, member of the Party Committee and director, Hu Linhua, former director of the Mass Work Department, Liu Jiashun, director of the Currency and Bullion Division of the Harbin Center, and Meng Xianwen, chief staff member. In addition, Mou Shangang, former party secretary and director of the Central Bank Organ Service Center, who was the general manager and chairman of China Gold Coin Corporation, was also "on the list".
Xie Zhong, who was investigated after Fan Yifei's fall, was Xu Zhen's successor in the Shangqing Institute, and the two were both promoted to deputy director of the central bank's payment and settlement department in 2003. Li Guo, Fan's former secretary, who fell in January this year, is also from the Payment and Settlement Department. Chen Zhiyang also exchanged with the department for two years.
According to public information statistics, since 2019, about eighty percent of the fallen people in the central bank system are from Fan Yifei's field, which can be called the "horse club" under Fan Yifei's leadership.
Among the known corruption information, multiple people are associated with third-party payment licenses. For example, Tao Xiaofeng, former chairman of Huida Assets, who was sentenced to five years in prison for bribery and embezzlement in 2021, conducted power rent-seeking in payment business license applications and helped three payment institutions illegally seek benefits.
Yang Biao, former deputy director of the Financial Services Department of the Shanghai headquarters of the People's Bank of China, who fell in 2019, was the director of the payment and settlement department of the first financial services department of the Shanghai headquarters, and took bribes of more than 2.6 million yuan in third-party payment business licenses.
Under the regulatory orientation of "all financial activities are included in the supervision and the financial business is licensed to operate", a financial license is precious for non-financial institutions or third-party platforms.
For some enterprises or third-party platforms that are eager to obtain payment licenses, it is still "cost-effective" to obtain a payment license with a market price of up to billions of yuan at the cost of millions of yuan in bribes. In this "small and broad" benefit exchange Asura field, there is no shortage of financial supervision cadres who are willing to be hunted or even actively seek to be hunted.
Since the beginning of the Yang Biao case, the central bank system has blown a storm of third-party payment anti-corruption.
Since the issuance of the first batch of payment licenses in 2011, the central bank has issued a total of 271 third-party payment licenses, with a pause in between. In recent years, through the renewal assessment of payment institutions, the central bank has cancelled a total of 75 payment licenses.
The mixed payment market has also accumulated many hidden risks. Even Fan Yifei himself has pointed out that some Internet companies use their institutions to cross-nest payment business with credit and other financial businesses to form a closed loop of business, and it is difficult for the business process to be penetrated and supervised, which is very easy to cause risks to spread across the market.
For example, Shanghai Changgou Enterprise Service Co., Ltd., which was obtained a payment license by Tao Xiaofeng for "releasing water", once had a capital risk exposure of up to 780 million yuan due to the risk event of embezzlement of reserves.
Before Fan Yifei "fell from the horse", both the central bank and the top management proposed to improve the rules and systems and risk prevention and control systems in the payment field.
In January 2022, nine ministries and commissions issued Several Opinions on Promoting the Healthy and Sustainable Development of Platform Economy Regulation, which mentioned the need to strengthen supervision over the abuse of market dominance related to non-bank payment services, and study and introduce regulations on non-bank payment institutions.
Previously, the PBOC issued the Regulations on Non-bank Payment Institutions (Draft for Comments) in 2021, but it has not yet been formally promulgated. The 2023 Legislative Work Plan released by Ziguangge this month still includes the formulation of the Regulations on Non-bank Payment Institutions.
Some insiders pointed out that Fan Yifei's "fall" and anti-corruption in the payment field may accelerate the issuance of the "Non-bank Payment Institution Regulations" to a certain extent.
Chasing "green light"
American novelist Raymond Carver famously said: "For most people, life is not an adventure, but a torrent of powerlessness." ”
For Fan Yifei, he is like Gatsby in "The Great Gatsby", yearning for the green light that flashes on the opposite pier all night, so he continues to swim upstream in the torrent of his life, hoping to reach the otherwise unreachable shore.
Unlike the experiences of his colleagues, Fan Yifei's life is quite legendary.
Li Chaoren once said that knowledge changes destiny. For the vast majority of people, this is the password of life, the college entrance examination is often the first threshold for "changing your life", and graduate school is the second opportunity.
At the first juncture, Fan Yifei did not jump into the gate and enter a prestigious school like his colleagues at the central bank or banks, but became a secondary school student at the CCB banking school. Although in various banking schools, a large number of financial executives from the rank to the ministerial level have also been born.
After graduating, Fan Yifei, who started his career at CCB Changzhou Central Sub-branch, returned to work in Yangzhou Branch in his hometown two years later.
At that time, he did not seem to be content with the status quo, and in his spare time, he read professional books on finance and economics, and he was keen to submit articles to various professional journals.
His articles did not attract attention in the industry. Until one day, there was finally a turnaround.
According to Fan Yifei's alumnus and CCB colleague who wrote an article on his public account "The Language of the Well Frog", Fan Yifei wrote an article at that time to defend the "theory of financial contracting" that was being questioned by many parties at that time, which attracted the attention of the big coffee and specially asked the editorial office of the magazine about Fan Yifei's situation.
As a result, Fan Yifei, a small employee at the grassroots level of the bank, directly crossed the "six-degree space" in interpersonal relationships and was directly related to academic celebrities in Beijing. This article became the key to Fan Yifei's "change of life".
Fan Yifei, who has a high emotional intelligence, attaches great importance to such a nobleman. So he specially went to Beijing to visit the old gentleman, which was quite appreciated, and there was a sense of "high mountains and flowing water meet acquaintances".
With the help of the old man, Fan Yifei was seconded to the Institute of Finance, and later became an assistant researcher.
During the research institute, Fan Yifei was still diligent in studying the business, and at the same time applied for Mr. Lao's master's degree. It was only because of his English scores that Fan Yifei was finally admitted after preparing for several battles.
Years later, when Fan Yifei, who spoke fluent English, verbally confronted the Bank of America representatives at the negotiating table, people probably did not expect that he had been in the graduate school because of the "old and difficult" problem of English.
Studying for a master's degree became the starting point of Fan Yifei's high-level life path, and it was also the key to his turnaround in academic qualifications. After receiving his master's degree, he continued to work hard to get admitted to Renmin University as a doctoral student, and his doctoral supervisor is also a big coffee in the financial field.
After graduating with a doctorate in 1993, Fan Yifei did not stay in the financial system, but returned to the CCB system, and in the following year joined CCB Trust and Investment Company (renamed Cinda Trust and Investment Company in 1997, which was abolished and liquidated in 2001) as assistant to the general manager and manager of the planning and finance department.
This CCB company is also where Tian Huiyu worked for five years. The fates of the two intersected with the same company, but the two did not have a parallel time at that time.
What is more interesting is that Fan Yifei and Tian Huiyu have walked the same trajectory several times, but the two do not intersect in time, just like two trains, always arriving at the same platform before and after.
In addition to CCB Trust and Investment Company, the two also entered a university, Columbia University, to "drink foreign ink", but they were in different departments at the same university. Later, Tian Huiyu and Fan Yifei worked in the Bank of Shanghai. Later, the two returned to CCB one after another.
Years later, one became a financial regulator and the other became the helmsman of the retail king. Then, the two were "down" one after another, and the list of crimes included words such as "moral turpitude, making money with money, keen to play golf, and illegally accepting huge amounts of money".
I don't know if the two people's "making money out of money" technique is the same.
According to the recollection of "The Language of the Well Frog", one year at a lecture, I heard Fan Yifei speak Marx's famous sentence: "If there is a 20% profit, capital will be ready to move; If there is a fifty percent profit, capital will take risks; If there is a hundred percent profit, capital dares to risk hanging; If there is a profit of 300 percent, capital dares to trample on all the laws of the world. ”
I don't know if Fan Yifei, who came from a financial background, later stretched out his hand to accept the bribe, did he calculate in his heart: how much benefit he has to get from it, so that he can not hesitate to try the law and ruin the glorious life that he has worked hard to fight to his current position?
"Gentlemen are at bay for what they like." Perhaps, as the famous saying that has been quoted excessively said: "Everything that fate has given has long been secretly marked with a price." ”
Fan Yifei's ending may have already laid a lot of foreshadowing over the years.
"The Language of the Well Frog" gives a small example in the article: more than ten years ago, Fan Yifei and his family came to Guangdong for the Spring Festival, and Mrs. Fan had a dispute with a Guangdong boss on the plane, and even added fists and feet. In order to be angry for his wife, Fan Yifei had to ask local acquaintances in Guangzhou to help him "ask for explanations", and it took some trouble for this.
After hearing about this later, the "Well Frog Language" couldn't help but worry a little for Fan Yifei, thinking that if he loves to pull the wind flag, it is easy to cause power willfulness.
Fan Yifei, who was once considered to be angry with some books, may have changed his mentality after experiencing a rich and colorful life experience and being in a very high position. And the result of this change in mentality will later be reflected in the line of "crime" on the announcement.
As summarized in the article "The Language of the Well Frog", after joining the grassroots like Fan Yifei, in the face of many temptations such as power, money, and color, it is easy to forget the original mission, and the power is capricious, "the pleasure of power rent-seeking, like profit-driven capital, boosts them to have no scruples."
In the view of this alumnus of Fan Yifei, only self-love, self-respect and self-discipline, in the face of various temptations can guard their moral bottom line, control the floodgates of desire, gain momentum without rampant, lose power and do not give up, do the right thing that is beneficial to the people, and walk on the right path of their own stability, can they fasten their seat belts for themselves and their families.
It has been said, "The meaning of success is not what you get, but how far you go from the starting point of that struggle." ”
Fan Yifei, who was wrapped up in power and profit, was like Gatsby, like "a boat against the tide, constantly pushed backwards until it returned to the old days."
In fact, like Gatsby, they can't go back to the old days. If you want to overturn the sea, what awaits Fan Yifei will be the rest of his life behind bars.
If he could go back in time, would he choose to spend an ordinary and peaceful life at the grassroots level?
【Fan Yifei Profile】
Born in August 1964, from Taixing, Jiangsu. He holds a master's degree from the School of Finance, Institute of Fiscal Science, a doctorate in finance from the Department of Finance, Chinese Minmin University, and a master's degree in international economics from Columbia University.
In July 1982, he worked in Changzhou Central Branch of Jiangsu Branch of China Construction Bank;
Around 1984, he worked in Yangzhou Branch of China Construction Bank.
Around 1987, he was seconded to the Institute of Financial Research and later worked as a research assistant.
In February 1994, he served as the assistant general manager and manager of the planning and finance department of China Construction Bank Trust and Investment Company.
In September 1994, he served as Deputy Director of the Capital Planning Department of China Construction Bank.
In July 1996, he served as the general manager of the financial accounting department of China Construction Bank;
In January 1998, he served as the general manager of the planning and finance department of China Construction Bank;
In February 2000, he served as the assistant president of China Construction Bank.
In March 2003, he went to the Three Gorges Project for temporary training and served as the assistant to the general manager of China Changjiang Electric Power Co., Ltd. until March 2004.
In August 2004, he served as a member of the Party Committee and assistant to the president of China Construction Bank.
In June 2005, he served as Vice President and Party Committee Member of China Construction Bank.
In March 2010, he served as the deputy general manager, party committee member and deputy chief operating officer of CIC.
In November 2011, he concurrently served as the chairman of Bank of Shanghai.
In January 2015, he served as a member of the Party Committee of the Central Bank of China.
In February 2015, he served as a member of the Party Committee and Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of China.
On November 5, 2022, he fell off the horse.
On June 9, 2023, it was double-opened.
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