Chinese rice trader 'made up $60 million purchase of US bank'

A rice trader whose $60m "purchase" of a US bank was held up as a symbol of China's economic ascent, has been exposed as an example of a less-flattering trait – the nation's notoriety for counterfeit goods and now, even institutions.

Businessman Lin Chunping

Lin Chunping, a 41-year-old from Wenzhou in east China's Zhejiang Province, made headlines in January after reports he had launched an audacious and successful takeover of the Atlantic Bank, with headquarters in Delaware.

Now, however, it has emerged that the bank may have been as fictitious as Mr Lin's claims.

In interviews with the local media at the start of the year Mr Lin offered scintillating details of his buy-out, claiming the 85-year-old North-American bank had gone bankrupt in 2008 as a result of the global financial crisis and that he planned to rename it the USA New HSBC Federation Consortium Inc.

It was a coup that brought political dividends. Mr Lin's alleged purchase was celebrated in the Chinese media and he was handed a place on the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference or CPPCC, China's top political advisory body.

But Chinese financial journalists and internet users smelled a rat and began investigating. They found no record of any Atlantic Bank in the state. In March, they confronted Mr Lin with their findings.

According to reports in China, he admitted to "exaggerations".

Before being exposed, Mr Lin had been held up as an example by local Communist Party officials. An online profile suggested he had worked his way up from poverty, hawking buttons in his hometown, before going on to buy copper and gold mines in West Africa. Back in China, he ploughed his profits into the rice trade opening the agricultural Chunping Group.

Mr Lin is now behind bars. He was arrested in Guangdong Province on Saturday on unrelated tax-evasion charges after two weeks on the run.

Six accomplices are also in custody.

"What Lin had done has brought down the reputation of businesspeople in the city," Zhou Dewen, the chairman of the Wenzhou Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Development Association, told the China Daily newspaper.

Mr Lin's tale is the latest in a longline of stories about Chinese fakeries, although possibly the first in which an entire bank was fabricated. Last year authorities located five fake Apple stores operating in Kunming, south-west China.

Last week pictures of a fake Burberry store, purportedly in Shenzhen in south-eastern China, circulated online. White lettering on the shopfront, intended to imitate the luxury British clothing line, read: "BUEBELLY."