BEIJING — China's central bank, the People's Bank of China, is "verifying" a report by state television that a major Chinese bank is helping clients transfer large amounts of money overseas in a program that violates currency controls, Xinhua, the state-run news agency, said Friday.
The allegation against Bank of China by CCTV, or China Central Television, caused a scandal when the state-run station aired a more-than-20-minute program on Wednesday accusing the bank of money laundering on a large scale via its "Youhuitong" service. The Chinese name translates as "preferential remittances."
"We have noticed the media report about a commercial bank's cross-border renminbi business, and are verifying related facts," a spokesman of the central bank, unidentified by name, was cited by Xinhua as saying. The bank was not identified by the spokesman.
"During business expansion, institutions must comply with laws and regulations, improve their related rules and prevent legal and operational risks," the spokesman said.
In recent years there has been rapid growth in cross-border renminbi business in response to domestic and international economic and financial market development, Xinhua cited the central bank spokesman as saying.
Bank of China has denied the accusation of illegality, saying its service, begun in 2011, was legal and experimental.
"Reports of 'underground money farms' and 'money laundering' have no basis in fact," the bank said in a statement late Wednesday that was amended shortly after publication to remove the name of the TV station and other details.
It was not clear why the bank made the changes, nor why Xinhua's story, datelined July 10, was not published until early on the morning of Friday, July 11. Both could indicate the high sensitivity of the story, with the central bank's statement issued in English indicating it was aimed at global audiences.
According to state regulations, a Chinese citizen may only remit the equivalent of $50,000 a year.
The issue is a hot-button one here, with officials, including high-level ones, detained daily as an anti-graft campaign championed by Xi Jinping, the president, deepens.
A recent investigation in Guangdong Province in the south, the apparent epicenter of the service, into "naked officials," or those who send their families abroad to live and study while themselves staying behind in China to continue in their posts, saw hundreds identified or punished, state media reported.
There is widespread suspicion among the public about the source of the officials' wealth, its manner of transfer and their patriotism, with the latter concern shared by Communist Party officials tasked with maintaining ideological purity.
Emigration is an attractive choice for many Chinese because of concerns over environmental pollution, education, health care, food safety and legal protections in a country without an independent judiciary.
Recently, too, the Communist Party secretary of Guangzhou, the provincial capital, was arrested on suspicion of corruption in June, though it is not clear on what specific charges, in a political earthquake.
The president, Mr. Xi, has declared he will pursue both "tigers" and "flies," or corrupt officials both high and low, in order to bring in clean government.
In China on Friday, reports of how much money was being funneled out via the service, which CCTV accused the bank of operating "secretly," were swirling.
The business had exported about 20 billion renminbi, or more than $3.2 billion, according to a post on Capital360, a Sina Weibo account that focuses on finance and economics and has nearly 1.2 million followers. About 10 billion renminbi was moved out in the first half of this year, it said, citing estimates by "industry sources."
Writing on Yicai, a finance website, Li Youhuan, an economics professor in Guangdong and the head of the magazine Enterprise Social Responsibility, said the sums involved were "gigantic." Exposing them would shame the nation, he wrote. "It's better that people do not know."
About the Bank of China, or so-called BoC, "incident, there's something I'd like to remind people about," Mr. Li wrote. "Most banks have such business, and BoC is absolutely not the only one."
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