Corruption cases, telco scams surge in China

BEIJING - In one of China's biggest bank frauds, former bank manager Xu Guojun was handed a life sentence in December 2023 for embezzling and misappropriating more than 2.3 billion yuan (S$430 million) between 1993 and 2001. Xu, who used to run the Bank of China's Kaiping branch in Guangdong province, fled to the United States in 2021 but was repatriated in 2023. He was sentenced in a court in Guangdong. Among other things, Xu and two others had applied for fake loans to obtain the large sum, investigations revealed. The case was highlighted in the work reports by China's…