Congress seeks to change legal landscape for data breaches

On April 26, it was reported that the parliament of China introduced draft legislation to combat "rampant" money laundering that has risen on the back of a worsening major crime culture.

The Xinhua news agency quoted one lawmaker as saying, "Money laundering has grown into a prominent problem in China, in the wake of rising serious crimes such as smuggling, drug dealing and corruption."

The draft law, which was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, is expected to be passed after several rounds of hearings, Xinhua said.

The legislation extends the scope of tracing suspicious money flows from the banking sector to insurance, securities and other commercial sectors, including real estate and auctioning.

The law will require banks and other businesses to carry out tougher checks on the background of their customers and report large and suspicious transactions to authorities.

The central bank of China also this month issued separate draft regulations requiring institutions in both the banking and insurance sectors to report block transactions to the central bank's anti-money laundering centre.

China's current anti-money laundering laws, first issued in 2003, are no longer tough enough to deal with the nation's increasingly serious financial crimes, said the deputy director of the lawmaking body's budgetary work commission.

"The current legal framework to monitor anti-money laundering is not well-founded, having little effect and delaying the country's efforts to counter money launder."

The central bank's anti-money laundering monitoring center had reported 683 suspected money laundering cases to the police in 2004 and 2005 that involved a total of 18 billion.