Former China securities regulatory chief Yi Huiman investigated for suspected corruption

BEIJING -  A former top Chinese securities regulator, Yi Huiman, has been put under investigation over suspected violations of law, China’s anti-corruption watchdog said on Sept 6.

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said in a brief statement on its website that Yi was being investigated and “suspected of serious violations of discipline and law”.

The statement gave no further details.

Yi, 60, was taken away by the authorities last week for an investigation, Reuters reported on Sept 5, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

The Chinese authorities have intensified efforts to crack down on corruption in recent years with probes of several high-ranking officials, including senior Chinese admiral Miao Hua.

Yi, a veteran of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), which he joined as a junior loan officer in 1985, helmed the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), which is under the administration of China’s State Council, from January 2019 to February 2024.

He was unexpectedly ousted as chairman of the CSRC amid a brutal sell-off in domestic stock markets that pushed the benchmark index to a five-year low and left institutional and retail investors scrambling to cut their losses.

He was replaced by the current head Wu Qing.

Since then, Yi has been a deputy director of the economic committee of China’s top political advisory body.

Before joining ICBC, he spent six months working at the Hangzhou city bureau of the Chinese central bank.

The people with knowledge of the matter, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter, said that Yi was being investigated for alleged corruption, including whether his relatives obtained improper benefits during his tenure as the CSRC chief.

They did not provide further details.

Yi could not be contacted for comment.

Yi attended two meetings of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference on July 29, according to the conference’s website, his last known public appearances.

He is not the first former senior regulatory commission official to face investigation in recent years. In April, authorities launched a corruption probe into former vice-chairman Wang Jianjun, who was removed from the post the following month.

Last November, another senior official, Wu Guofang, was also placed under investigation on similar suspicions.

China was rocked in 2024 by corruption probes into high-profile individuals ranging from a deputy central bank governor to a former chairman of its biggest oil and gas company, adding to unease in an economy struggling to secure a firm footing and a society grappling with a fading sense of wealth.

The CCDI, which roots out and punishes corruption within the 97 million-member ruling Communist Party, is extremely powerful and operates above state oversight.

‘Sitting by a volcano’

Domestic media and industry participants often liken the position of the CSRC chief to “sitting by a volcano crater” to illustrate the difficulty of leading the agency and overseeing China’s volatile financial markets.

Yi’s five-year tenure at CSRC was marked by several ambitious reforms aimed at modernising China’s capital markets, boosting financing for the country’s technological innovation and improving market efficiency.

Under Yi, the CSRC advanced several major reforms in the world’s second-biggest stock market, including the Star Market, China’s Nasdaq-style high-tech board which started trading in Shanghai in 2019, and the establishment of the Beijing Stock Exchange in 2021 to facilitate funding for innovative small and medium-sized companies. 

The CSRC under Yi also embraced a registration-based initial public offering system which replaced the previous approval-based IPO system, under which companies had to go through a strict vetting process by the regulator.

Yi’s tenure as CSRC chairman also saw a wave of high-profile IPOs by Chinese companies, both at home and offshore.

The most notable IPO story during his tenure was the dramatic suspension of fintech giant Ant Group's planned dual listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong in 2020.

At the time, Ant, poised to be valued at around US$315 billion and aiming to raise US$37 billion – a world record – had its IPO abruptly shelved at the last minute by Beijing.

The Chinese authorities pulled the plug on the IPO and later cracked down on founder Jack Ma’s business empire after he gave a speech in Shanghai earlier that year accusing financial watchdogs of stifling innovation. REUTERS