Bohai Bank Nanjing Branch's 2.8 billion yuan bank deposit embezzlement case detonated the weekend financial circle.
According to the "China Business Daily" reported on the evening of the 23rd, without the knowledge of the enterprise, its 2.8 billion yuan deposit was used as a loan pledge guarantee, and the guarantee company had nothing to do with the enterprise.
After the incident was exposed, the Nanjing branch of Bohai Bank quickly issued a statement in the early morning of the 24th, saying that it had "found abnormal behavior between enterprises" and had called the police.
Is the pledge guarantee of huge deposits illegally misappropriated by banks, or is it caused by "abnormal behavior" between enterprises, as the bank said? The whole case is a "Rashomon".
Banks wrestle with pharmaceutical giants
Before reviewing the whole incident, let's take a look at the identities of the protagonists involved.
There are two so-called "guarantors", namely Wuxi Jiyu Shanhe Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shanhe Pharmaceutical") and its related party Nanjing Hengsheng Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Hang Seng Pharmaceutical").
According to Tianyan, Shanhe Pharmaceutical is an 80% subsidiary of Jiangxi Jimin Trusted Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Jimin Group"), and Hang Seng Pharmaceutical is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tibet Derong Venture Capital Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Jimin Group, that is, the grandson company of Jimin Group.
The RMB2.8 billion used as collateral for the loan pledge was the deposit of the two enterprises at the Nanjing branch of Bohai Bank.
Jimin Group is a well-known modern health industry group in China, ranking 11th in the 2019 "Top 100 Pharmaceutical Industry in China". Founded in 1999, the company's business covers pharmaceutical, energy, investment and other fields, with more than 12,000 employees, headquartered in Nanchang, China. In 2020, the Group's operating income exceeded 39 billion yuan.
Huaye Petrochemical Nanjing Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Huaye Petrochemical") is the "guarantee object" of Shanhe Pharmaceutical and Hang Seng Pharmaceutical, and was only incorporated on March 1, 2019. From the perspective of equity penetration and equity ratio, Huaye Petrochemical should be a 100% state-owned enterprise. After the establishment of the company, it has conducted bill financing from Bohai Bank Nanjing Branch.
The Nanjing Branch of Bohai Bank, established in 2009, is one of the 34 first-class branches under the jurisdiction of Bohai Bank. According to Bohai Bank's 2020 annual report, the number of employees of Nanjing Branch is second only to That of Tianjin Branch and Beijing Branch, and its position within the Bohai Banking System is evident.
2.8 billion deposits were cut off
Due to the complexity of the "pledge guarantee" incident and the fact that the relevant reports have been deleted, we will review the process of the incident according to the timeline.
In November 2020, bohai bank Nanjing branch pledged Huaye Petrochemical's bill financing with the deposit of Shanhe Pharmaceutical, and the bank issued a semi-annual acceptance draft to Huaye Petrochemical, with the first invoice amount of 300 million yuan. Since then, shanhe pharmaceutical and Hang Seng pharmaceutical have successively deposited 2.8 billion yuan in the bank, which have been used for pledge guarantees.
On August 19, 2021, Yu Jianghua, the legal representative of Shanhe Pharmaceutical, received a call from the staff of the Nanjing Branch, saying that someone was converting the electronic deposit into a paper certificate of deposit over the counter to pledge the loan for others, and asked Yu Jianghua whether the enterprise has the real willingness to handle the certificate of deposit pledge business. ”
Yu Jianghua was very surprised, so he quickly reported the situation to the capital management department of Jimin Group. After the fund management department called the Nanjing branch to verify, it immediately stated that the company had never allowed anyone to handle the deposit pledge and asked the bank to immediately call the police.
However, since then, Jimin Group has found that the 2.8 billion yuan deposits of Hang Seng Pharmaceutical and Shanhe Pharmaceutical have been withdrawn, and inquired about the head office of Bohai Bank to learn that all deposits have been pledged.
It is worth mentioning that the deposits of Shanhe Pharmaceutical and Hang Seng Pharmaceutical in the Nanjing branch of Bohai Bank totaled 3.3 billion yuan, of which 500 million yuan was not pledged, which was not completed when the bank counter verified the intention to Jiang Hua on August 19.
On August 21, in a hotel in Shanghai, Hu Zhaofeng, general manager of the sales department of Bohai Bank Nanjing Branch, Guan Pengcheng, assistant general manager, and Dong Mou, director of the capital department of Huaye Petrochemical, met with the financial personnel of Jimin Group to discuss the solution to the incident.
According to the recording materials at the time, Guan Pengcheng and Dong both said that they had not communicated with Shanhe Pharmaceutical and Hang Seng Pharmaceutical about the pledge of guarantees.
What makes people cry is that Guan Pengcheng admitted that "this is a loophole in the (Bohai) Bank" on the one hand, and on the other hand, he hoped that Jimin Group could allow the bank to continue to use Shanhe Pharmaceutical's 500 million yuan deposit to provide a certificate of deposit pledge for Huaye Petrochemical.
Such a request will naturally not be accepted by the Jimin Group, and the two sides will not be happy.
On August 24, Shanhe Pharmaceutical and Hang Seng Pharmaceutical delivered a notice letter to the Nanjing Branch of Bohai Bank, informing the bank that it must ensure the safety and free withdrawal of deposits of the two companies, and must not carry out deductions and other illegal operations.
On August 25, because Huaye Petrochemical failed to repay the loan on the repayment date, the Nanjing branch continued to deduct 500 million yuan of Hang Seng Pharmaceutical's deposit, and later returned 50 million yuan to Hang Seng Pharmaceutical's account because it found that Huaye Petrochemical still had 50 million yuan on its account.
On August 26, the staff of the Capital Department of Jimin Group went to the counter of Bohai Bank Nanjing Branch to inquire, hoping to retrieve all the information of the company's business in the bank, but did not do so.
On September 3, Shanhe Pharmaceutical and Hang Seng Pharmaceutical chose to report the case to the Wuxi police.
The background of the collateral is a mystery
After this matter was exposed, it quickly fermented in the financial circle. In the early morning of the 24th, Bohai Bank Nanjing Branch issued a statement that has been reported:
Judging from the content of the statement, the bank believes that the guarantee pledge is an "abnormal behavior" between enterprises, and does not mention the bank's responsibility.
However, this statement, in the eyes of the reporters of the relevant reports of China Business Daily, can be described as "thieves shouting to catch thieves":
On the evening of the 24th, Jimin Group issued a sternly worded statement on the official WeChat public account, in response to the reporting time, solutions, withholding funds, radish chapters and other issues, and posted relevant audio and video materials, and issued a "soul torture" to the Nanjing branch of Bohai Bank.
One of the most puzzling things is that after pledging the deposit of Jimin Group for Huaye Petrochemical, bohai Bank Nanjing Branch also issued a false inquiry letter to the accounting firm.
According to Jimin Group' statement, in March 2021, Wuxi Fangsheng Accounting Firm issued an inquiry letter to Bohai Bank Nanjing Branch during its routine investigation of Shanhe Pharmaceutical. Under the content of the letter that "the total of 1.01 billion yuan of 7 deposits of Shanhe Pharmaceutical in Bohai Bank does not have any freezing, guarantee or other restrictions on use", the Nanjing Branch made the following reply: "After verification by the Bank, the items certified by the letter are consistent with the information recorded by the Bank. ”
But Hu Zhaofeng, general manager of the bank's sales department, admitted on August 21 that each deposit was pledged within a few days of being deposited.
In addition, the background of Huaye Petrochemical's "national brand" is also debatable.
According to the industrial and commercial information provided by Tianyancha, Jiangsu Huazhiye Energy Development Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Huazhiye Energy"), as the parent company of Huaye Petrochemical, was established on July 9, 2021. At that time, its shareholder was Huaye Petrochemical. On July 22 of that year, Huaye Petrochemical withdrew, and Beijing Huachang Real Estate Co., Ltd. ("Huachang Real Estate"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of PetroChina, became the new shareholder.
To summarize simply: on July 9, Huaye Petrochemical was still a 100% shareholder of Huazhiye Energy; on July 22, Huaye Petrochemical transferred the equity of Huazhiye Energy to Huachang Real Estate; on July 26, Huazhiye Energy took over 100% of the equity of Huaye Petrochemical.
After some equity transfer, Huaye Petrochemical and Huazhiye Energy achieved a "mother-son translocation" within a month, and Huaye Petrochemical also transformed into a great-grandson company under PetroChina. However, is this layer of hastily put on the cloak of "state-owned enterprises" real or false?
On September 23 this year, Huachang Real Estate issued a statement saying that the company did not set up subsidiaries:
Up to now, Bohai Bank has not responded to the "six questions" of Jimin Group.
Who is at fault for risk control loopholes?
According to the above, including the attempted pledge of 500 million yuan of certificates of deposit, Huaye Petrochemical raised at least 3.3 billion yuan from bohai Bank Nanjing branch bills.
What is the concept of $3.3 billion? Let's take a look at the financial information of Bohai Bank.
According to the bank's 2020 annual report, as of the end of 2020, the balance of loans totaled 887.538 billion yuan. According to the division of industries, among them, the balance of loans in the wholesale and retail trade totaled 46.695 billion yuan.
From the perspective of Huaye Petrochemical's business scope, its main business is the operation of hazardous chemicals, the sale of petroleum products, etc., so its industry should be classified as wholesale and retail.
This means that the loans issued by the Nanjing Branch to Huaye Petrochemical account for at least 7% of the total loans issued by Bohai Bank to customers in this industry (3.3 billion yuan / 46.695 billion yuan).
Although Bohai Bank's behavior of "big accounts" is not unusual (in 2020, the bank's single largest customer loan ratio is as high as 8.1%), it is rare in the industry for a branch like the Nanjing branch to issue a huge loan to a start-up with a background that has been established for more than a year.
After Huaye Petrochemical's loan was overdue, the Nanjing branch actively promoted it, not hesitating to offend the tens of billions of pharmaceutical giants and intercepting its bank deposits halfway, which could not but make people doubt whether there were certain interests between the borrower and the lender.
In fact, the risk control loophole of Bohai Bank Nanjing Branch has a long history.
As early as 2011, the bank had exposed the incident of 100 million yuan of loans being involved. This was the largest loan issued in the two years since its opening, but it became an expensive and delicate thing to take away when a boss "ran away".
Since 2017, the bank and its subordinate second-level branches have been fined more than 2 million yuan by the Jiangsu Banking and Insurance Regulatory Bureau for a number of violations such as "the return of loan funds for bank acceptance draft deposits".
As for whether the 2.8 billion yuan guarantee incident this time will bring a new round of heavy damage to the Nanjing branch of Bohai Bank, it is up to the police and regulatory authorities to further investigate and collect evidence.
For Shanhe Pharmaceutical and Hang Seng Pharmaceutical, such a large amount of money can not be used directly, what should be the next step? As a production-oriented enterprise, the contract signed with the downstream seller cannot be performed, who is responsible? If the raw material supplier refuses to continue supplying in the later stage because of the arrears, who should the responsibility fall on?