The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection talked about Yao Qian's use of virtual currency for power-for-money transactions: Focus on systematic rectification in the financial and other fields

Odaily News The Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection emphasized that corruption must be punished without stopping, with emphasis on systematic rectification in the financial and other fields, efforts must be made to solve the problems of discovering, collecting evidence, and characterizing new types of corruption and hidden corruption, and to severely investigate and punish abuse of power, dereliction of duty, and illegal decision-making that cause major losses to state-owned assets.
In recent years, the importance of technology supervision in the financial sector has become increasingly prominent. The high professional and technical barriers have brought about problems such as "difficulty in management, supervision, and accountability", which has made the integrity risks in the construction of financial information systems increasingly prominent. While seriously investigating and punishing the corruption of Yao Qian, the former director of the Science and Technology Supervision Department and the former director of the Information Center of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the National Supervisory Commission stationed in the China Securities Regulatory Commission have carried out system rectification from point to surface, continuously strengthened the atmosphere of strictness, and focused on preventing and controlling integrity risks.
"Using virtual currency to trade power for money is one of the typical characteristics of the Yao Qian case, and it is also a new situation that has not been encountered in previous case investigations." Relevant responsible persons of the Disciplinary Inspection and Supervision Group of the China Securities Regulatory Commission told reporters that unlike physical assets such as cash and gold, virtual currency is calculated based on the principles of cryptography. It is just a string of digital symbols on the Internet. It is isolated from the account system of current commercial banks and payment institutions, completely circumvents national foreign exchange controls, can be exchanged across borders at will, is highly concealed, and is difficult to detect, collect evidence, and solidify.
In light of Yao Qian's work experience and characteristics in the use of power, the Discipline Inspection and Supervision Group of the China Securities Regulatory Commission carried out in-depth and meticulous ideological and political work on Yao Qian. After prompting him to confess to the disciplinary and illegal acts of using his power to help others make profits and accepting virtual currency, they promptly obtained important physical evidence such as virtual currency hardware wallets, strictly followed the relevant work requirements for electronic evidence collection, extracted his virtual currency transaction records, and carried out price assessment work, which helped to achieve a breakthrough in the case.
"Yao Qian took advantage of his position to accept huge bribes from many companies and provided assistance to others in the procurement of information systems, involving matters such as project contracting, project promotion, fund allocation, and engineering acceptance. His case further confirms the problems that we pay attention to in daily supervision, such as the high professional and technical barriers in the field of information system construction, and the great risks of integrity in procurement and other links." Relevant responsible persons of the Discipline Inspection and Supervision Group of the China Securities Regulatory Commission introduced that in response to the problems exposed by the case, the Discipline Inspection and Supervision Group put forward supervisory opinions to the Party Committee of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, urging it to be highly vigilant against the risks of integrity in information system procurement and to strengthen the construction and implementation of relevant systems.
In November last year, it was reported that Yao Qian, former director of the Science and Technology Supervision Department of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, was expelled from the party and removed from office for allegedly using virtual currency to trade power for money.