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　　"Money laundering" has become an important means for corrupt officials to "legalize" corruption and an important feature of corrupt behavior. Some corrupt officials, after being caught, bluntly said that hiding money was their biggest headache. From public reports, the money laundering methods of Chinese corrupt officials are dazzling.

　　Below, let's take a look at what methods Chinese corrupt officials use to launder money.

　　1. Artworks

　　Xu Beihong's oil painting "Jiang Biwei" was sold for 72.8 million yuan but later confirmed to be a student exercise from an art academy; the 220 million yuan "Han Dynasty jade stool" became a joke in the circle; Qi Baishi's "Pine and Cypress Standing Tall · Four-character Couplet in Seal Script" jumped from 20 million yuan to 420 million yuan within 2 years; some contemporary artists with no international influence have auction prices of tens of millions... The art market is booming, and one important reason is that it has become one of the best ways for corrupt officials to launder money in China.

　　The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection analyzed that fakes can also become money laundering tools. For example, the briber first appraises the fake as genuine through illegal appraisal channels and gives it to the bribe-taker. Then, the briber consigns the fake to an auction company in the name of the bribe-taker for auction. Another bribe-taker stores the fake in his possession at a dealer's place. When a briber intends to bribe, the bribe-taker directly or indirectly informs that he has a hobby of collecting and designates a specific dealer. The briber buys the fake from the dealer at a high price.

　　2. Real Estate

　　Through online exposure, a series of officials' "house sisters," "house aunts," "house uncles," and "house grandpas" have emerged one after another. These officials hide their identities and launder black money through the real estate market, which shows that the real estate industry has long become their "money laundering paradise." This is largely related to the poor implementation of the real-name home purchase policy and the delayed personal housing information system in cities and towns.

　　Implementing the real-name home purchase policy and building a personal housing information system in cities and towns are ultimately to prevent corrupt officials from laundering money in real estate. According to the website of The New York Times on February 18, the system can easily query information such as the number, address, and area of houses under a citizen's name. The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development once required that the personal housing information systems of 40 key cities nationwide be networked by the end of June 2012, but to this day such a system is still difficult to deliver. Because those officials who own several or even dozens of properties do not want to open this "black box" and have been obstructing its opening.

　　3. Bitcoin

　　Some commentators pointed out that the reason Bitcoin is so popular in China is definitely because it is anonymous, tax-free, and unregulated, allowing cross-border money laundering transactions. Those playing Bitcoin are not Chinese housewives, but the wives and mistresses of Chinese corrupt officials.

　　On December 5, 2013, the central bank issued the "Notice on Preventing Bitcoin Risks," clearly stating that Bitcoin "is not a real currency." The fact is that in Weibo and WeChat circles, some solicitation information for Bitcoin money laundering services is still being spread.

　　4. Shell Companies and Agent Companies

　　Some corrupt officials, in order to launder "black money," engage in "one family, two systems": they use their power to make money while in office, and their wives and children use their "business" identities to cover up the source of black money. Or they first make money and then launder it: after public officials embezzle and take bribes, they resign and start businesses or trade stocks, using their new identities to explain their abnormal sudden wealth.

　　There are also government officials or state-owned enterprise executives who set up private enterprises or agent enterprises, through which they can transfer black money to the accounts of these enterprises through economic transactions and also make another profit through normal tax-paying operations.

　　5. Stock Dividends

　　This method has different manifestations in different periods, such as interest on fund-raising in the past, accepting dry shares now, and personal rewards for introducing foreign investment, etc., putting a legal cloak on corruption proceeds.

　　In March 2001, the Kangsei stock case once shocked the whole country. The senior management of Kangsei Group Co., Ltd. (now Huangshi Kangsei Industrial Development Co., Ltd.) believed that for a company to go public, it must go through many hurdles; as long as it could get approval documents, it would spare no expense in public relations. For example, in December 1993, Xu Penghang, then deputy director of the State Economic and Trade Commission, at the request of Kangsei Company, intervened to work on the company's stock listing, making it a standardized joint-stock pilot unit with priority listing qualification. Afterwards, Kangsei Company purchased and gave internal employee shares plus dividends and allotments totaling 121,000 shares to his family members, and after the stock was listed, they obtained a premium of 1.13 million yuan (all returned at the time of investigation).

　　6. Gambling

　　Just as the Yuanhua case surfaced, the central task force entered Xiamen. Lan Fu, the former deputy mayor of Xiamen, with a guilty conscience, fled to Australia and was brought to justice a month later. When asked about his unexplained property and his disciplinary violations of gambling abroad, he shamelessly listed his "achievements" at the casino: within a few years, he had made as much as 650,000 US dollars and 330,000 Hong Kong dollars through gambling!

　　However, the confessions of some people who had already been brought to justice and had accompanied Lan Fu to gamble were very different from Lan Fu's "account." Lan mostly returned defeated. It turned out that the much-hyped gambling exploits were just a pretext for the corrupt official Lan Fu to launder money.

　　Some corrupt officials cover up the source of their property by buying lottery tickets and winning prizes.

　　7. Foreign Bank Deposits

　　Foreign banks known for offshore business and confidentiality have always been overseas money laundering channels for corrupt officials. For example, the Liechtenstein bank's office in China. This is a bank that absolutely implements confidential services, offering "deposit in China, withdraw globally" services, that is, "global money laundering," allowing deposits to go abroad by purchasing foreign funds and then withdraw and redeem abroad. And this money can also be invested back in China as foreign capital.

　　China's international balance of payments "net errors and omissions" item has hundreds of billions of US dollars every year, and in recent years the total has reached hundreds of billions of US dollars, of which the amount of capital outflow caused by money laundering accounts for a considerable proportion.

　　8. Underground Banks

　　Some corrupt officials, mainly through underground bank agencies, use some specialized "water guests" to smuggle cash back and forth at ports in small amounts many times, like "ants moving house," and then deposit it into bank accounts in the name of currency exchange points after smuggling it across the border. Although this method requires certain fees, the risk is relatively small, and it is difficult to ascertain the identity of the client.

　　9. Trade and Investment

　　Trade and investment are actually the two most common money laundering paths, with the common characteristics of stronger concealment, higher technical content, and larger amounts involved.

　　Many cases show that many people from state-owned enterprises and central enterprises are involved in money laundering, transferring domestic funds abroad in the name of foreign investment, but many projects are actually fictitious or half-true, or the funds are illegally possessed or misappropriated abroad.

　　A report by Global Financial Integrity pointed out that many legal funds leave mainland China in the form of FDI (foreign direct investment) to enter Hong Kong, the Virgin Islands, and other offshore financial centers, then are laundered to other entities, and then re-invested in the mainland in the form of FDI (foreign direct investment) originating from Hong Kong and the Virgin Islands. "This is a complex money laundering system that uses relaxed supervision of FDI to secretly hide and accumulate wealth for China's high-net-worth individuals," the report said.

　　10. Credit Card Consumption

　　When many people marvel at the spending power of mainland tourists abroad, they may not realize that using credit cards to consume or withdraw cash abroad can also launder black money. A research report by the People's Bank of China pointed out that, on the one hand, corrupt elements can consume or withdraw large amounts abroad, and on the other hand, they can embezzle and take bribes domestically and repay with illicit money. Credit cards and UnionPay cards, while providing convenience for domestic personnel to travel and consume abroad, also provide convenience for corrupt domestic personnel to transfer funds across borders.