The source of this article: Times Finance Author: Lu Jieping
The wholesale market near Sanyuanli is photographed by Times Finance
In 2019, when the telecommunications fraud method of "killing pigs" was frequently exposed and countless victims were defrauded of property, foreign trade merchants in Yiwu, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other places may not expect that they have been involved in it and have become a part of the money laundering in the core interest chain of the black industry. This makes them suffer deeply in their future production and operation.
On the afternoon of April 20, a foreign trade merchant wearing an orange T-shirt stood at the door of a bank in Guangzhou, raised his right hand and lit the mobile phone screen to the bank staff, "The bank card is frozen again, what to do?" ”
After talking to the staff for a few minutes and making a phone call, he didn't say much, turned around and stepped into the battery car and prepared to leave.
Times Finance came forward to talk and learned that in the second half of 2020, more than 1 million yuan in several of his bank cards was frozen by a police station in Shandong, and he went to Shandong at that time, but he did not expect that another card was frozen now.
"I didn't go this time, there was not much money in The card, and the cost of going back and forth was not cost-effective." The man told Times Finance that coming to the bank could not help the bank card to unfreeze, and this time he came to ask where the police station froze his card.
At this time, there were nearly ten customers sitting in the bank hall, and a female customer in front of the window took out the business license, lease contract, delivery documents and other information from the file bag in her hand, and chatted with the staff. The other customers in the hall, too, had three or four in their hands or in bags with documents such as business licenses, waiting boredly.
In the bank, there are verification information tips that need to be provided to close the electronic banking channels
Times Finance came forward to inquire about these queuing customers and found that their bank cards were frozen without exception. The security guard at the bank gate said that it was commonplace, "The bank cards of many merchants around have been frozen, and there were people arguing in the bank before, but the quarrel was useless, this is the public security department engaged in the 'card breaking operation'." ”
In Guangzhou, the "frozen card tide" of foreign trade merchants has spread for a long time, unlike Yiwu foreign trade merchants can go to the bank account freezing assistance center led by the Yiwu Municipal Government to seek help, the same large number of Guangzhou foreign trade frozen card merchants still have no platform to ask for help, can only seek their own ways to unfreeze and wait for the day of thawing.
<h5>The creeping uneasiness: "The money doesn't seem to be your own anymore."</h5>
The banks, located in the gap between a number of trade cities, have become a small stronghold for Guangzhou's foreign trade frozen card merchants.
The bank mentioned above is near Guangzhou Meibo City. Meibo City is located near the Sanyuanli subway station, with a total operating area of nearly 120,000 square meters, bringing together thousands of merchants of all sizes such as beauty salons, education and training, raw materials, product packaging, OEM processing, professional instruments and equipment, etc., attracting a large number of professional merchants from Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Russia and other neighboring countries to trade. It is also known as the "Beauty Capital of Asia".
In addition to the beauty trading center such as Meibo City, there are also foreign trade clothing, clocks, auto parts, hardware, leather, shoe materials, ceramics, jade play and other types of wholesale and retail cities near Sanyuanli, which is a famous foreign trade distribution center. Since last year, the epidemic has caused a lot of impact on local foreign trade business, and some merchants have described to Times Finance that before the epidemic, there were more black-skinned people on the road than Chinese, and the streets were densely packed. But now, near Sanyuanli, only a few foreigners can be seen sporadically, and the overall flow of people has dropped a lot.
Wang Yonghui began to open a store in Meibo City in 2016, operating a fake intention, and his customers were mostly African businessmen. When the epidemic struck in 2020, foreign businessmen no longer came to Guangzhou for offline procurement, so he temporarily closed the stalls, sought transformation in the second half of the year, began to be busy developing e-commerce, and the transactions with new and old customers also turned online.
In December last year, after recruiting operations and business employees, Wang Yonghui's store was finally launched, but it is still in the early stage of investment and has not made a profit. In March this year, Wang Yonghui suddenly found that his three bank cards were frozen and unusable.
He first went to the bank to inquire, and the bank gave a police station phone number, and then he went to a police station in Guangzhou to take notes. Wang Yonghui said, "The police did not make it clear, only that my card was frozen by the police station in Shanghai, and they were assisting the case handling party and asked me what the purpose of the card was." ”
Wang Yonghui was suddenly confused and asked the police: "What the hell did I do?" The police replied that he was suspected of "helping to defraud information online."
It turned out that when the epidemic broke out, foreign businessmen no longer came to Guangzhou, and Wang Yonghui still used chat software such as WhatsApp to communicate and trade with foreign customers. "They place orders, I invoice, ship, collect. But maybe because they are foreigners, they don't know how to operate China's banking system, and they can't open a card, so they can only take local money and find local people who can provide foreign exchange business to exchange for yuan. Wang Yonghui judged that customers are also doing business normally, but when they exchange money in the middle, they may have come into contact with underground money banks, and their money came from an unknown source, which in turn affected both sides of the trade.
After showing a series of information such as chat records with customers, account transactions, shipping box lists, invoice accounts, customer payments, etc., he successfully walked out of the police station, and the current business is also running normally. "Because the police in Guangzhou are also aware of the situation in Guangzhou, I am doing foreign trade."
Wang Yonghui's three frozen bank cards totaled less than 100,000 yuan, and one card was not frozen and could still be used, so he did not plan to go to the police station in Shanghai, but his life and business were still affected. "You want the bank card to not be used, it is difficult to open the card, I have an account period on the supplier's side, if the money cannot come in or the card is frozen, there is no way to settle the payment to the supplier, originally because of the epidemic, the business is difficult to maintain, the card is frozen, it is more difficult."
Wang Yonghui lives in Foshan and travels between two places every day, but because a frozen card is tied to ETC, he can only queue up to take the artificial passage on the highway. "There is also a card bound to gas, can not pay money, life is very inconvenient." Now in order to avoid being frozen, the money will be transferred to the supplier as soon as the card arrives, and the money does not seem to be my own. ”
<h5>"Like being treated like a prisoner," lawyers: "freezing" measures should be more cautious</h5>
This is not the first time that Wang Yonghui has been frozen, but this time the frozen card is even more alarming. Two years ago, the police station of Liantang Town, Nanchang County, Nanchang City, Jiangxi Province, also froze one of his bank cards, and Wang Yonghui successfully unfreezed the card a week after taking notes in the local area.
"It was a simple inquiry, and this time it was like I had really committed a crime." Wang Yonghui said bluntly that everything is like the plot in the TV series, entering the police station to search the body first, then measuring the height, taking pictures on the front, taking pictures on the side... "I immediately made up which piece of the problem." But he thought about everything and still didn't find any problems.
The police did not tell which part of the funds were involved. "The police made me think for myself and asked me ' Which payment do you feel is wrong?' I said at the time that I had not smuggled or sold drugs, and there was no problem with any sum of money. Wang Yonghui also has puzzlements, for example, some merchants are involved in the amount of only 20,000 yuan, why freeze all the funds in the bank card? He didn't know about the underground money bank, so why was he suspected of "helping to defraud information online"?
Lawyer Zeng Jie, a senior partner at Guangqiang Law Firm and director of the Defense and Research Center for Illegal Fund-raising Cases, told Times Finance that according to the 2013 Relevant Provisions on The Application of Sealing and Freezing Measures by Public Security Organs in Handling Criminal Cases, public security organs can freeze deposits and remittances involved in the case in accordance with the law. "However, article 27 of it clearly stipulates that 'the amount of money frozen in the accounts involved in the case shall be equivalent to the amount involved in the case.'" Funds must not be frozen beyond the scope of the amount involved in the case. That is to say, according to the provisions of the Ministry of Public Security, in practice, non-case assets that can be clearly distinguished cannot be frozen. ”
Zeng Jie held that under these provisions, where measures are taken to seal or freeze property unrelated to the case, or where the property is sealed or frozen beyond the scope of the case, the parties, defenders, agents ad litem, and interested parties have the right to appeal or make accusations to the organ.
Wang Yonghui introduced that Guangzhou's foreign trade model is no different from Yiwu, foreign trade self-employed households in the collection of payment to rmb settlement, foreign customers are also accustomed to through the underground money bank exchange to settle the payment, foreign trade merchants are in a passive payee, can not require customers to settle the payment in what channels.
However, the previous collection mode of foreign trade merchants is now being tested.
In the "Letter to Public Security Organs Across the Country", which caused heated discussion in early April, the Criminal Investigation Brigade of the Yiwu Municipal Public Security Bureau said that with the deepening of the crackdown on the "card breaking operation", in order to launder money, the collusion between the criminal gangs in the telecommunications network fraud case and the underground money banks has become closer, and the fraudulent stolen funds have been directly converted into cash and transferred to the operating merchants for whitewashing, resulting in the frequent freezing of the bank accounts of the yiwu operating merchants by the public security organs across the country.
Another Foreign Trade Merchant surnamed Zheng surnamed Zheng, whose frozen money exceeded 1 million yuan, told Times Finance, "Foreign customers come to order, they give us money again, who knows whether their money has passed through the agent, where it comes from, we are only responsible for delivery." If you ask anything, will the business be done? ”
Zeng Jie said that in some current cases, some simple recipients, such as foreign trade merchants, or simple digital currency traders, or domestic payees with remittances from overseas relatives, have been accused of constituting the crime of illegally buying and selling foreign exchange or helping information network criminal activities and have been taken compulsory measures. However, the core of such cases is the evidence that can prove that the payee subjectively knew the facts of the crime of others, and this kind of evidence is often insufficient, and the subjective knowledge problem cannot be determined solely by relying on the bank flow, and the payee should generally be characterized as a "witness" in the case caused by the flow of such stolen funds.
"In addition, in view of measures such as freezing cards, before taking such investigative measures, the public security organs should make a detailed distinction between the sources of funds and transaction models of the relevant beneficiaries, and if there is a situation of good faith acquisition, or it is not related to the criminal act itself in the case under investigation, it is more prudent to take frozen card measures, first collect evidence, and then execute, which will be more reasonable." Zeng Jie thinks. In fact, the public security organs did not convict merchants like Wang Yonghui, "just frozen cards, no arrests." ”
At present, Wang Yonghui's bank card is still frozen, and the date of unfreezing is unknown. He said that the cards of other friends have been frozen for two and a half years and have not been unfrozen.
<h5>For decades, the rules of the industry have been difficult to change, and banks must improve their innovative service capabilities</h5>
The bank hall also has a number of anti-money laundering and anti-fraud publicity materials, displaying several cases of foreign trade merchants whose accounts were frozen due to receiving remittances from unfamiliar accounts, and cases where export trade bypassed the receipt and payment of foreign trade companies.
Publicity materials on the card breaking operation in the bank, photo by Times Finance
The promotional materials read, "The export of goods must be paid for through formal channels, and the remittance of strange RMB accounts must not be accepted." As long as the previous collection model is not standardized, there will be risks, and the model cannot be considered reasonable and legal because it existed before. ”
The above-mentioned foreign trade merchants surnamed Zheng said that they are actually just a form of trade in stalls, but now they can only rise to the payment mode of large companies without freezing the card, which is not easy for both the receiving and payment sides.
At present, China's export settlement has several forms such as receiving and settling foreign exchange, bills, regular foreign exchange settlement, wire transfer T/T, checks, etc., but because most foreign trade merchants do not understand these collection methods, coupled with higher tariffs, changing exchange rates at any time, long exchange cycles and other reasons, most merchants choose third parties for foreign exchange. Therefore, most foreign trade merchants choose to let foreign customers exchange money on the third-party platform on their own, and the other is to find an underground money bank to exchange foreign exchange.
"The requirement that a customer have a bank account number is not very feasible now. Some customers come from developing countries, or even backward countries, they take goods back to the stalls, and even the bank account opening qualifications are not available, and they can't cooperate with you. Even if they have an account, they have to exchange their national currency for US dollars and then call us, which will incur a very high fee, and they are not willing to do this. The merchant said.
After more than 10 years of work in the public security organs' investigation, finance, command center and other business departments, lawyer Zheng Xiaohong, who has experience as the legal director of a foreign trade company, told Times Finance that underground money banks play a role similar to that of financial institutions in the foreign trade industry, helping the foreign trade industry to conduct foreign exchange transactions, which is convenient and faster than formal financial institutions, cheaper, and tax avoidance.
"Just as the so-called 'there is demand there is a market', based on the above advantages of the underground money bank, there will inevitably be demand, so in the case that the problems of foreign trade enterprises on financing, capital turnover and business risk control have not been effectively improved, the underground money bank will not be completely banned." Zheng Xiaohong thinks.
Honghao, chief financier of The China Financial Think Tank, told Times Finance that if you want to cut off the business contacts between foreign trade merchants and underground money banks, the next step must be to solve the practical problems they encounter in operations, such as financing, capital turnover, and operational risk control. "It can be said that foreign trade merchants are a core link in the black industry interest chain, and if they solve their business difficulties, the black production chain will definitely be hit hard."
Honghao believes that the difficulty of foreign trade capital circulation is the pain point of small and medium-sized cross-border trade enterprises, and the risk of overseas fund sources has become an element that plagues financial institutions' anti-money laundering risk control. With the strengthening of anti-money laundering efforts by global financial regulators, many financial institutions have become increasingly cautious about the investigation of the sources of funds in corporate accounts, which objectively increases the difficulty of operating small and medium-sized export enterprises.
The role of China's small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises in international trade is becoming increasingly important, bearing more than 70% of China's exports of goods, but the construction of the corresponding foreign trade financial infrastructure is relatively lagging behind.
Honghao said that banks should develop foreign trade financial service products suitable for small and medium-sized enterprises. "The innovation ability of banks is too lagging behind, in addition to supervision, the BANKING and Insurance Regulatory Commission must also guide banks to innovate services, and the central bank must also guide bank financial innovation in addition to supervision, and only legal financial institutions can fundamentally solve the problem by innovating."
For the foreign trade merchants who are currently deeply affected by the frozen card, what kind of way to collect and pay, Zheng Xiaohong gave a few suggestions: for foreign trade SOHO, individual or small and medium-sized and micro enterprises without import and export rights, you can find a foreign trade integrated service enterprise to collect money, use the name of the foreign trade company to carry out one-stop trailer customs declaration, T/T collection, L/C letter of credit collection, agent export tax rebate, etc.; individuals can also register an offshore company to collect money in the name of the company, and can also use the name of the offshore company for international trade. However, this has the disadvantages of difficult risk control, high difficulty in opening accounts, and strict state supervision.
The bank's promotional materials also suggest that for export trade, it is recommended to choose a regular foreign trade company for collection and payment. "The foreign trade company that chooses to carry out the 'export settlement business under the market procurement trade' is a complete and compliant foreign trade payment method promoted by the Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Commerce, which is specifically for the foreign trade payment and settlement of the professional market."
In Honghao's view, in the second half of 2021, whether it is a foreign trade individual or an enterprise, the suspected illegal exchange and cross-border transfer of funds will be the focus of investigation and crackdown.
Wang Yonghui, who is in the tide of frozen cards, still feels embarrassed: "The current model is a rule accumulated by an industry, and it is not accepted to change it all at once." I should collect money, but now I will find a way to reduce the risk, such as large amounts of funds to take the formal channels, small amounts of cash only to receive cash, or receive money immediately withdrawn, or immediately transferred to the downstream. ”
On the day of the interview with Times Finance, because the bank card was frozen, Wang Yonghui and a friend were coming to Guangzhou from Henan to seek a way to unfreeze.