Chinese investors have discovered a new way to spirit money out of the country behind the backs of the country’s regulators.
In recent years, savvy investors have used false invoicing as a way to disguise their capital flight. A Chinese company pays $1m to a foreign company for a machine tool that is actually worth $500,000; the rest is invested in property or stocks in London or Sydney or New York.
In the fourth quarter of 2014, the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) became wise to the scheme and began requiring banks to provide more documentation when they allocated foreign exchange to such overseas transactions. As a result, this form of evading capital controls has become more difficult to pull off.