A new super-regulator takes aim at rampant corruption in Chinese finance

Hardly a day passes without someone in Chinese finance “falling off his horse”, or coming under a corruption investigation. State media warned on June 5th that the banking industry is infested with “moths”—mid-level managers who slowly ingest lenders’ resources from the inside out. “Internal ghosts”, executives who use insider connections to pilfer billions from banks, often pose a greater danger. There are “nest cases”, where clusters of fraud spanning several banks are discovered at once, and “skewer cases”, in which the arrest of one banker leads to another, then another. After a recent spate of scandals an official newspaper dubbed smaller banks an “anti-corruption disaster zone”.