Chinese banks: What do you do after you find your savings missing?

China has the world’s highest household savings rate. By the end of 2014, deposits in China’s financial institutions amounted to ¥116 trillion. According to incomplete statistics, within one month, there were more than seven cases of deposits being inexplicably lost. If we go back through 2014, according to a China Banking Regulatory Commission notice, there have been more than a dozen deposit “disappearance” cases. These include Luzhou Wine’s missing deposit of ¥150 million and 42 Hangzhou depositors missing a total of ¥95.05 million.

Once savers lost deposits, it was very difficult to hold the banks responsible. In 2008, a man surnamed Zhang deposited ¥9 million in the Jiangsu Province, Yangzhong Branch of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. Bank business director He Weihua transferred the funds out and used it to repay his personal debt. After six years of litigation, in 2014, the appeals court found that the bank had no fault so there would be no compensation. The reason for this decision was that the court found it was He’s personal action, and not the bank’s responsibility.

Some depositors have been compensated after their money was lost. In the Hangzhou case, 42 bank depositors received compensation, but this is a rare exception.

No compensation is not the worst thing that can happen. A Chongqing couple by the name of Mr. and Mrs. Zhang Jing, more than a decade ago, had four deposit accounts in the Agricultural Bank totaling more than ¥1.2 million, but then the money just “disappeared.” In 2006, they sued the Agricultural Bank and were charged with crimes. The husband was sentenced to four years for the crime of fraud. After the media’s sustained attention, Zhang was released from prison. Eventually, the couple was found not guilty of any crime. (Boxun composed this report from articles in a Chinese newspaper.)