China's banking regulator on Thursday confirmed the corruption scandal in a Bank of China branch in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, which was recently exposed by media report.

The bank incurred the losses after a businessman fraudulently obtained banker's acceptance bills from a branch in Heilongjiang and cashed them at other banks.

Tang Shuangning, vice chairman of China's banking regulator or the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC), for the first time gave an official confirmation of the scandal while having an on- line interaction with netizens at Xinhuanet, the news website of Xinhua News Agency.

A number of bank officials, including the former head of Bank of China's Shuangyashan city Sima Road sub-branch in the northeast province of Heilongjiang, have been named as suspects, Tang said.

The corruption scandal recently came to light when CBRC was conducting a large scale personnel reshuffle in its local branches.

"Part of the money has been recovered, but a large sum of the fund is still missing," he said.

Bank of China, the country's second-largest commercial lender is preparing to be listed in Hong Kong this year.

In a similar scandal occurred last year, Gao Shan, the former head of a sub-branch in Heilongjiang's capital of Harbin, also vanished with "huge sum of money" earlier last year, Tang said.

Official figures show that 1,272 cases in financial institutions were brought to light last year, 784 of which actually happened in 2004 and lasted till 2005, Tang said.

Source: Xinhua