Tencent Faces Possible Record Fine for Anti-Money-Laundering Violations

Chinese technology giant Tencent is facing a potential record fine for violations of some central bank regulations by its WeChat Pay mobile network, as Beijing toughens its regulations for fintech platforms, WSJ reported Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. From a report: Financial regulators recently discovered that WeChat Pay had flouted China's anti-money-laundering rules and had lapses in compliance with "know your customer" and "know your business" regulations, among other things, some of the people said. Tencent's ubiquitous mobile payments network was also found to have allowed the transfer and laundering of funds with illicit transactions such as gambling, the people added. For WeChat Pay, "know your customer" and "know your business" procedures mean it must verify the identities of users and merchants transacting on its platform and the source of funds for those transactions. The People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, uncovered the breaches during a routine inspection of WeChat Pay that concluded in late 2021, the people familiar with the matter said. The size of the fine is still under deliberation and it could be at least hundreds of millions of yuan, some of the people said. That would be much larger than the fines regulators typically imposed on nonbank payment companies for anti-money-laundering rule violations in the past.

The cost of doing business

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

In the West, fines are simply the cost of doing business. In China, are the....consequences....of non-compliance harsher, or also just like the West?

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

There are consequences not just for the business, but for the leaders like the CEO. The CCP thinks that the main problem with Western capitalism is lack of strong regulation, so their regulations are REALLY strong.

Re:

[Gravis Zero]

There are consequences not just for the business, but for the leaders like the CEO.

This seems to be logical because it's the leaders that structure how businesses operate. Investigative measure should be taken to identify the culprit but responsibility starts at the top.

The CCP thinks that the main problem with Western capitalism is lack of strong regulation

Ugh... I don't like that I agree with the CCP on something.

so their regulations are REALLY strong.

There is such a thing as overdoing it.

Re:

[spun]

Hahaha, oh my. Seriously? You really think there are strong regulations in China?

Do they apply to connected party members, or just the common person? Show me one insider who has been punished, for anything.

They can rape famous tennis stars, and the tennis star is forced to apologize. There are no consequences for party insiders in China.

It's not communist, it's just another gangster capitalist authoritarian hellhole. Workers do not control the means of production in China. The party does. That's called stat

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

The treatment of Peng Shuai is because she spoke out, and embarrassed the Chinese government. It's a shitty situation but it doesn't change the fact that when China regulates it really regulates. About five years ago there was a crackdown on corruption, with some high ranking members of the CCP caught up in it. Business leaders have disappeared for months over this kind of thing.

I'm not a "simp" whatever the fuck that means, I'm just interested in understanding China. Failure to understand China, and consis

Re:

[spun]

You carry water for dictators. I agree with you on many things, but you consistently carry water for fucking dictators. Simp is an acronym, "Suckers Idolizing Mediocre People." Xi and Putin are sub par humans, and you defend them. China and Russia are authoritarian hellholes, and you defend them. I simply can't respect anything about you, while you defend the indefensible.

Some high ranking CCP members were "caught up" in a scandal? Oh no! I guess they were severely punished? What are their names, and where

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

Hold on when have I ever defended Putin? They guy destroyed my country, fuck him. Xi I won't defend because he's a monster. He genuinely cares about ending poverty, but what he is doing to minority populations in China is horrific.

No, fuck both those guys.

Re:

[spun]

Okay, sorry, I was pretty sure had seen posts from you in the past defending both, and repeating their talking points. But maybe you were just repeating their talking points without realizing what you were doing.

I've just seen too many people I used to like turn into tankies. I used to enjoy watching Jimmy Dore, for example. Jill Stein, also sadly compromised by Putin. The left in the West does not need failed authoritarian faux socialism from former communist countries that privatized their worker-controll

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

Xi wants to be the new Mao. A hero to the Chinese people whose legacy lives on after his death.

He does genuinely care and poverty, he's just a monster who goes about it in the worst possible way.

Re:

[spun]

Funny how caring about poverty and not giving a shit about poverty can look exactly the same. But socialism is not "one hero curing poverty." It is "We, the people, deciding together how to use the world's resources to end poverty, forever." Of course, you and I both know that China is in no way even close to socialist.

Re:

[ras]

Hahaha, oh my. Seriously? You really think there are strong regulations in China?

He's probably right. One of the markers of corrupt regimes is "strong regulation". Here is a quote from the Wikipedia article on the Corruption Perceptions Index [wikipedia.org]: A study published in 2002 found a "very strong significant correlation" between the Corruption Perceptions Index and two other proxies for corruption: black market activity and an overabundance of regulation.

You see it everywhere. For example, when a US state pas

Re:

[spun]

An overabundance of regulation that is selectively enforced is a sign of corruption, sure. But sensible regulation, enacted specifically to protect those who are most vulnerable, is almost always a sign of a healthy democracy. Don't use this to bad mouth all regulations. Without activism, the government would never have regulated overtime pay, child labor laws, food safety laws, environmental laws, and hundreds of other things the owning class has tried to pull for extra profit. We had to work hard to get t

China can't tolerate it's aristocracy

[rsilvergun]

crashing their economy every 10 years like the United states can. Their government is too brutal to get away with it, and they have too many different groups of people. The need to maintain a basic level of economic stability or their country will break back up into the warring states.

Remember, China is a *big* country. We all think of them as the same, but they do not do the same. Their central gov't has to constantly work to keep the country from breaking apart into civil war.

Fined for not money laundering?

[omfglearntoplay]

Fined for:
ANTI-money laundering ... violations.

That definitely reads to me as, a violation of an anti-laundering situation.

"Hey you, stop all that anti-money laundering stuff immediately!"

Re:

[jonadab]

What it actually means, in this context, is allowing ordinary Chinese people to acquire non-Chinese assets (foreign stocks, foreign real estate, foreign cryptocurrency, or pretty much any other financial asset that is outside of the party's control). In principle, only state-run companies and the upper party elite are supposed to be able to obtain (any significant quantity of) foreign investments. In practice, absolutely everyone in China wants to own foreign assets, because they are the most reliable for

Oh so this is why Epic was pushing NFTs

[thegarbz]

It begins to all make sense now. Pandering to their Chinese owners yet again. /Sarcasm.

Or was it sarcasm? Honestly reality is getting dumber than fiction these days.