ICIJInternational Consortium of Investigative Journalists
14.09.2026 à 23:41
Chinese banking giant serves firms linked to oligarchs and autocrats to push Beijing’s agenda
In the heart of London’s financial district, tucked between the Bank of England headquarters and London Bridge, is one of the world’s most influential institutions. The majestic neoclassical building is hard to miss, but few passersby would recognize the ancient coin-inspired logo of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.
This outpost of the biggest bank in the world has grown over three decades to hold tens of billions of dollars in assets, expanding rapidly as China has ascended on the world stage. And yet its daily operations remain highly secretive.
For the first time, a trove of confidential records reviewed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists offers a window onto the inner workings and decision-making of ICBC, a vital cog in China’s global geopolitical ambitions. The records reveal that the state-owned bank has used London as a financing hub for companies linked to sanctioned Russian and Belarusian business owners, autocrats publicly accused of corruption and China’s political establishment.
As part of China Capital, ICIJ found that at times the bank’s Beijing headquarters directed bank officers overseas to pursue explicitly political objectives for its majority shareholder, the Chinese state — to cement alliances, acquire natural resources and expand control over communications, energy and transportation infrastructure around the world. While doing so, ICBC breached some of its own anti-money laundering and sanctions policies, the investigation found.
ICIJ examined 4.8 million ICBC records in collaboration with 23 media partners. The files, in English and Chinese, come from the confidential archives of ICBC’s London branch and a separate subsidiary at the same address, and are dated between 2005 and 2024. They include reports marked as trade secrets; internal emails; confidential dossiers and lists with details on more than 4,000 corporate clients; meeting minutes; suspicious transactions logs; and directives from the bank’s Communist Party committee, an internal cell that facilitates party activities and advances government policies.
China Capital shows how ICBC London routinely financed companies with opaque financial flows and murky corporate ownership, justifying the deals as part of its support for the government’s top priorities: the massive infrastructure investment plan known as the Belt and Road Initiative and the industrial policy Made in China 2025. The bank’s risky practices often sparked internal misgivings and recriminations, the records show.
“There is very little appetite to offboard high financial crime risk business,” a money laundering reporting officer noted in an internal memo in 2019.
China Capital reveals that ICBC offered services to clients that were shunned by Western lenders for failing to stem corruption or cut ties with sanctioned owners or partners. Among its top clients: Russian and other companies crucial to sustain Moscow’s military operations.
Those included the Russian mining giant Norilsk Nickel, also known as Nornickel, held up by President Vladimir Putin as a symbol of resistance despite the difficulties caused by the Western sanctions. In 2024, ICBC London and other overseas branches considered providing loans in Chinese currency and other financial services to Nornickel — a longtime client controlled by Putin allies — at a time when the U.K. and the U.S. had banned imports of Russian nickel in an effort to starve the Kremlin’s war machine. As other international banks wavered, ICBC remained a reliable partner, the records show. Nornickel’s minerals are vital to China’s booming electric vehicle and battery industries.
Norilsk Nickel CEO Vladimir Potanin, left, meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in October 2025. Image: via Kremlin.ru
ICBC was one of the few foreign banks that actually increased exposure to Russia after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Between 2022 and 2023, ICBC more than doubled its gross revenue in Russia and earned around $370 million in 2024, according to the latest available figures analyzed by the Kyiv School of Economics.
While regulators in the U.S., Canada and Luxembourg have fined the bank’s local units for violating rules to prevent financial crimes, including those to combat sanctions evasion, the confidential records reveal that about a dozen other countries had expressed concerns about similar flaws at ICBC’s overseas entities. The bank’s executives were also aware of compliance failures at its London operations, the records show.
Through a spokesperson, the Chinese government said it rejects any “false narratives” of “opaque lending.” A representative for the Embassy in Zambia told ICIJ in a statement that China’s overseas financing “strictly” follows market rules and international norms and “never … seeks political interests.”
China Capital exposes how ICBC helps Beijing to pursue profit and power, ignoring international standards when the occasion suits. ICBC did not respond to ICIJ’s repeated requests for comment.
Christopher Walker, vice president at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said in an interview with ICIJ that China’s banks provide badly needed capital “desired around the world” — but with less regard for conventional banking standards, transparency and accountability. “What is typically missing is both the information about what can accompany those resources — which is censorship, surveillance, forms of corruption, secrecy, wrapped around such financing — and often forms of elite capture, certainly in more vulnerable settings,” Walker said. “Authoritarian capital, in the end, is quite corrosive capital.”
ICBC was founded in 1984 to take over the commercial banking operations of China’s central bank. While ICBC is listed on the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock exchanges, its majority shareholders are China’s Finance Ministry and state-owned entities.
ICBC is the biggest of China’s four state-controlled institutions that present themselves as commercial banks. But unlike their international counterparts, ICBC and the others have a dual mandate of maximizing profits and serving the economic interests of the party-state.
According to James Stent, a former banker who was on the board of two Chinese lenders, ICBC has to “please two masters”: the party and the shareholders. “The government guides banks in areas of the economy it wishes them to lend into, to support the government’s five-year plan,” Stent told ICIJ. “At the same time, it uses the bottom-line profit of the banks to keep score, so to speak, on the competence of the management team.”
ICBC has been a major force in China’s global expansion strategy, establishing 410 subsidiaries and branches in 49 countries and regions by the end of 2025. With more than $8 trillion in assets, it is the biggest bank in the world by asset size.
Top 10 global banks by assets, 2026
Data: via S&P. Assets as of Dec. 31, 2025.
This year marks 30 years since ICBC established its presence in the U.K. From the century-old building on London’s King William Street, ICBC now runs a branch of the Chinese parent and a separate ICBC subsidiary that has provided cash accounts to a range of retail clients, including Chinese diplomats and academics living in the U.K. and some British officials. Both entities are regulated by Britain’s main financial services watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority.
The rapid growth of ICBC London’s operations over the last decade has roughly coincided with President Xi Jinping’s ambitious economic policies: the Belt and Road Initiative, to build and invest in massive infrastructure projects expanding China’s market access — and influence — around the world; and Made in China 2025, to transform China into a high-tech superpower by acquiring cutting-edge technology and dominating global supply chains.
ICBC in the U.K. became an important conduit to achieve those goals, financing Chinese investments in key infrastructure projects and extending loans to foreign state entities to shore up Beijing’s political alliances. But while the bank grew its portfolio of clients, it lacked adequate policies to vet politically exposed clients — prominent people more susceptible to bribery or corruption. And some managers viewed standard rules designed to prevent financial crimes as a hurdle to the business, the records show.
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited’s London headquarters. Image: May James/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
In early 2016, two sisters named Arzu and Leyla Aliyeva approached ICBC London to open an account for Pasha Bank, a financial institution they co-owned alongside their grandfather, Arif Pashayev. The women, ages 29 and 31 at the time, listed jobs in the media industry as their source of wealth, but a detail in their résumés stood out: The Aliyevas are the daughters of Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s authoritarian ruler since 2003 and the subject of repeated investigations into corruption allegations. Pashayev is his father-in-law.
Confidential emails show that ICBC analysts understood early on that the clients were risky but “overlooked” evidence of possible corruption exposed in a number of media reports. ICIJ’s 2013 Secrecy for Sale investigation had revealed the sisters’ links to offshore companies that benefited from building contracts worth billions amid a massive construction spree by Aliyev. And as the bank assessed whether to take on the Aliyevas’ bank as a client, ICIJ’s Panama Papers investigation revealed that the women indirectly controlled companies with interests in Azerbaijan’s telecommunications, construction, mining, oil and gas sectors. The investigation also uncovered yet another piece of their vast real estate portfolio: a London property worth millions that they owned through a web of secretive shell companies, a tactic often used to hide the origins of funds. The Aliyevs have previously denied wrongdoing.
ICBC records show that bank officers brushed off concerns about whether the prospective clients’ funds had been legally obtained. In a memo, an ICBC analyst observed that scrutiny of the sisters’ Pasha Bank was unlikely because the judiciary and law enforcement were under the control of the Azerbaijani government — led by their father. “The entity and the [ultimate beneficial owners] are not likely to be investigated,” the memo said. So in 2017, ICBC London accepted Pasha Bank as a client.
But in 2021, about two years after British authorities investigated an Aliyev business associate and his wife suspected of buying U.K. assets with illicit funds, ICBC London finally expressed concern about Pasha Bank. An officer noted: “due to ambiguity over the source of funds, one cannot rule out that the funds deposited with ICBC London could have been potentially contaminated by the proceeds of crime.” Pasha Bank didn’t respond to ICIJ’s requests for comment.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, center, with his daughter Arzu Aliyeva, wife Mihriban Aliyeva, daughter Leyla Aliyeva and son Haydar Aliyev in Shusha, Azerbaijan in 2021. Image: via president.az
ICBC decided to end its relationship with Pasha Bank. But it took its time. Senior managers pushed back against some bank officers’ suggestions to immediately drop the client and agreed to wait until Pasha Bank’s deposits — then worth $24 million — matured a few months later.
At the same time, ICBC London kept another Aliyev-linked company as a client: Azerbaijan’s state oil concern, Socar. The Western Asian nation is a key transportation hub and has received more than $900 million in Chinese investments since 1995, according to estimates by the Azerbaijani government. In exchange, the Aliyev government has supported a regional security partnership led by China and Russia, as well as Beijing’s positions at the United Nations and its controversial territorial claims over Taiwan.
Socar is a key source of public funding for Azerbaijan. Past media investigations have revealed how the president’s family and friends used the company to register a luxury mansion in London and to vacation on two company yachts worth $59 million. A German government probe also found that Socar representatives made an illegal donation to a political party, and U.S. prosecutors alleged in an indictment against a member of Congress — later dropped after President Donald Trump pardoned him — that Socar had paid him to advance Azerbaijan’s interests.
In 2021, ICBC London agreed to lend about $90 million to its longtime client Socar to help it refinance an old loan. The bankers dismissed an outside compliance firm’s warnings that the company was opaque and mired in corruption allegations, the records show.
ICBC officers acknowledged Socar’s lack of transparency and accountability but concluded that the client was simply too important for Beijing: “SOCAR is a strategically important client for ICBC in view of supporting China’s 2013 One-Belt One-Road policy aimed at creating infrastructure and establishing links among the Eurasian countries.”
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Asia-Pacific About the China Capital investigation Sep 14, 2026
Recommended reading HUAWEI Chinese bank helped Huawei spirit $1B out of London days after US indictment of the tech giant Sep 14, 2026 Asia-Pacific About the China Capital investigation Sep 14, 2026 CORRUPTION ICBC promoted corrupt executive, ignored employee misconduct as it pursued global expansion Sep 14, 2026
>About a year after the payments, the sheikh’s father, Sheikh Jaber al-Mubarak al-Sabah, resigned as prime minister amid allegations of embezzlement of millions of dollars in military aid funds. Months later, Kuwaiti prosecutors arrested the son, accusing him and other accomplices of laundering more than $1 billion linked to the plundering of Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund — part of a global criminal case that involved influential politicians, pop stars and fraudulent financiers.
A suspicious-activity report months after his arrest revealed alarming new details about the transactions. In the report dated early 2021, an officer at ICBC London wrote she suspected that “the 2 aforementioned payments made to UK Law Firms were to launder the proceeds of Sheikh Sabah’s involvement in the 1MDB scandal, by investing them in UK property.” A Kuwaiti court later sentenced him to 10 years in prison.
Sarah Beth Felix, an anti-money laundering and sanctions expert who also trains law enforcement, told ICIJ that the sheikh should have been classified as a politically exposed person, which would have prompted additional checks on large transactions well before the banker filed the suspicious-activity report.
“If they would have designated him correctly, the transactions would have triggered some kind of alert,” she said.
The FCA said it doesn’t comment on specific companies. “Fighting financial crime is a priority for the FCA,” a spokesperson for the agency told ICIJ in an email. “We look carefully at all issues raised with us,” he said.
A photo from inside the ICBC London offices. Image: via China Capital confidential files
ICBC repeatedly dismissed allegations of corruption and other crimes against company executives in countries governed by autocratic leaders, including oil-rich Angola under longtime dictator José Eduardo dos Santos.
When convenient for Beijing, the records show, the bankers would willingly serve state companies — even those that were not transparent about their financial flows and controlled by governments that, in the words of one ICBC banker, were “clearly kleptocracies.”
Ben Cormier, a senior lecturer of international political economy at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, said part of Chinese lenders’ appeal for corrupt governments is that the Chinese government is not especially interested in either transparency or accountability. “The lack of accountability is a selling point,” he said in an interview with ICIJ.
ICBC London helped the bank’s headquarters dole out more than $2.5 billion in loans to Angola’s state-owned oil and gas company, Sonangol Group, while it was controlled by cronies of dos Santos, another subject of widely publicized corruption allegations. Internal memos about a 2010 loan illustrate China’s leverage as Angola’s largest foreign creditor, requiring Sonangol to both sell its oil to China and use the loan proceeds to hire Chinese construction companies.
The bank’s partnership with Sonangol continued well after ICIJ’s 2020 Luanda Leaks investigation revealed that Sonangol’s U.K. subsidiary — ICBC London’s direct client — was involved in the payment of about $58 million to a Dubai consulting company controlled by a friend of Isabel dos Santos, the president’s daughter and head of Sonangol between 2016 and 2017.
Isabel dos Santos, Angolan businesswoman and daughter of former Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos. Image: Christopher Pike/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Internal memos dated 2021 show that ICBC analysts dismissed the findings and said any criticism of the Angolan president’s daughter was “motivated to some degree by chauvinistic interest.” Isabel dos Santos was later sanctioned by the U.S. and the U.K. governments, and charged by Angolan prosecutors for causing state losses of around $219 million while she was head of Sonangol. She has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. Sonangol did not reply to ICIJ’s comment requests.
One of those ICBC memos provided a simple argument for why the bank would continue banking with the oil company: “Angola is a belt and road partner of China and an emerging markets client we have supported for over a decade from ICBC London.”
ICBC's presence outside of China
Source: ICBC 2025 Annual Report.
China’s backing of authoritarian regimes and allies has long been on display in Belarus, where dictator Alexander Lukashenko has ruled for more than three decades, brutally repressing any dissent.
In early 2018, ICBC London became the overseas banking hub for Chinese construction giant Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science and Technology. Zoomlion’s U.K. subsidiary — known as Zoomlion Powermole Ltd. — was the majority shareholder in a joint venture with a Belarusian state concern that invested in an industrial park near the Minsk airport. The park included a production hub for automated cranes and other heavy vehicles. Back when he was China’s vice president, Xi had personally promoted the “landmark” project for his Belt and Road Initiative, alongside Lukashenko.
Zoomlion used its U.K. subsidiary’s ICBC London account to pay for the lease of state land and fund the park development.
In the summer of 2020, Western governments imposed sanctions on some Belarusian entities after Belarusian authorities arrested more than 7,000 protesters and tortured hundreds who accused the government of rigging the elections that crowned Lukashenko president for the sixth time. At least three people died, according to human rights advocates. Even so, China and Russia pledged to support Lukashenko’s violent regime.
As Lukashenko’s government increased repression against regime critics, and later emerged as a key supporter of Russia’s military aggression, the European Union and its allies expanded the sanctions package. New sanctions targeted Zoomlion’s Belarusian partner in the joint venture, Minsk Automobile Plant, or MAZ, which was described by Lukashenko himself as “one of the most important industrial enterprises of the country,” according to EU sanctions records. MAZ also supplied the Russian occupation forces in Ukraine with machinery, including trucks equipped with anti-drone technology. While the U.K. didn’t blacklist MAZ, it imposed restrictions on the supply of dual military-civilian goods and other technology to Belarus.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko at the Minsk Automobile Plant, known as MAZ, in January 2025. Image: via president.gov.by
The sanctions didn’t seem to worry ICBC London, the records show. In 2021, Zoomlion wired more than $7 million to the Belarusian joint venture as part of its investment in the industrial park.
ICBC London officers acknowledged in internal emails that the joint venture was involved in the production of heavy machinery that could be considered dual-use technology. Despite MAZ’s role in the company, ICBC officials found “no sanction concern,” saying the Belarusian firm had only a 3.03% stake in the venture.
Still, documents obtained by ICIJ’s media partners at the Belarusian Investigative Center show that Zoomlion and MAZ later worked on a plan to “circumvent” trade restrictions.
After the U.S. sanctioned MAZ in 2023, identifying it as a “significant source of revenue” for the Lukashenko regime, the Belarusian firm left the joint venture. It eventually signed a deal with Zoomlion that would allow MAZ to supply truck chassis to Zoomlion through an unsanctioned third party. MAZ did not reply to requests for comment. It is not clear if the plan was executed.
Procurement records uncovered by the Belarusian Investigative Center show that last year Zoomlion’s Belarusian firm obtained a no-bid contract to supply three truck cranes, each capable of lifting more than 27 tons, to the Belarusian military, which closely cooperates with Russian forces.
A Zoomlion spokesperson told ICIJ in an email that the company and its subsidiaries “manufacture and distribute civilian construction equipment” and strictly comply with the laws and regulations of the jurisdictions where they operate. Zoomlion declined to comment on specific transactions and customers citing “commercial confidentiality obligations.”
t Union. He was once accused by a business rival in a London court case of bribery and ordering the murder of a bank executive — allegations he denied. A leaked U.S. diplomatic cable placed Deripaska “among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis.”
Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska. Image: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images
In 2017, as part of an agreement allowing borrowing of up to $2.5 billion, ICBC’s Beijing office used the London branch to provide $105 million to the Russian mining giant Nornickel, in which, the bank records say, Deripaska indirectly held a 13% stake. The following year, the U.S. government sanctioned Deripaska for allegedly benefiting from Russia’s “malign activity around the globe” and froze his U.S. assets, including his New York and Washington, D.C., mansions.
When months later an ICBC London anti-money laundering officer noticed that Deripaska had, in fact, been sanctioned, he warned other bank officers that the branch was in breach of its own sanctions policy. The bankers, though, decided to make an exception for Nornickel, reasoning that Deripaska was only a minority shareholder who didn’t appear to control day-to-day operations, ICBC records show. Deripaska said on social media at the time that he denied any wrongdoing and that the sanctions were politically motivated.
In an internal report, ICBC Beijing officers suggested that Nornickel was simply too important for the bank to sever the relationship. Nornickel itself has not been sanctioned. “ICBC Group has long-term relationship with the company,” an officer wrote. The report also noted that the London branch shouldn’t question the decision from headquarters: “Maintaining the good and cooperative relationship with head office is helpful for us to develop more business with [head office] together.”
ICBC would commit to lend an additional $200 million to Nornickel in 2020, as part of a loan with 21 other banks, including three other Chinese state banks, JPMorgan Chase, UniCredit and other European and Asian financial giants. (Nornickel and JPMorgan did not respond to ICIJ’s questions. UniCredit declined to comment on the matter.) ICBC London later changed its internal policy so that it could bank with clients that are less than 10% owned by sanctioned entities or individuals.
But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 triggered a new round of Western sanctions and, in response, strict capital controls issued by the Kremlin. This led to a six-month stalemate for Nornickel when it had to start paying back the loan, records show. In 2023, Nornickel resorted to asking Moscow for special permission to pay the banks in foreign currency, which was granted. However, it was a sign that many international banks would not be an option for future loans, and Nornickel executives traveled to China, where they visited 12 potential new lenders, according to the records.
A view of the non-operating Nikel smelter, owned by the Russian mining giant Norilsk Nickel, also known as Nornickel, in the town of Nikel in the Murmansk region. Image: Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images
For ICBC it was an opportunity. Its branches in Moscow and Shanghai already provided “substantial” services to the mining giant, including foreign exchange, deposits and cash management, according to a 2024 internal memo. The bank considered working on a new credit line in China’s own currency, the renminbi, as a way around U.S. dollar financing.
Meanwhile, ICBC London officers weighed the risks of retaining the Russian client and applauded Nornickel’s idea to build a smelting plant in China and label its products Chinese to avoid potential sanctions.
An officer from the bank’s Financial Crime Prevention Unit reasoned in an internal memo: “This is because it is harder to sanction a Chinese good made in China.”
In the summer of 2024, ICBC London’s chief risk officer prepared a presentation with graphics in traffic light colors — green, yellow, red, for low, medium and high risk in all areas, including financial, geopolitics and security. The presentation warned that the bank was facing difficult times. U.S.-China relations were strained, “geopolitical risk” was high and Beijing’s support of the Kremlin didn’t help.
A traffic light-coded risk heat map from a presentation at ICBC London. Image: via China Capital confidential files
“China’s relations with Russia are very good and this causes friction with the West,” the officer wrote.
Headquarters was urging all the subsidiaries and branches to form a united front, with the whole bank acting as one. The presentation quoted the bank’s motto: “One branch, one policy,” a reference to Xi’s famous mantra, “One Belt, One Road.” Unified under the guidance of ICBC’s Beijing headquarters, the presentation said the bank could manage “any likely scenario.”
Contributing reporters: Denise Ajiri, Agustin Armendariz, Kathleen Cahill, Jelena Cosic, Jesús Escudero, Miguel Fiandor Gutiérrez, Micah Reddy, Delphine Reuter, Fergus Shiel, Dean Starkman, Angie Wu (ICIJ), Gloria Riva (L’Espresso), Sviatlana Yatskova (Belarusian Investigative Center).
14.09.2026 à 23:41
Chinese bank helped Huawei spirit $1B out of London days after US indictment of the tech giant
A
little after sunrise on a cloudy Saturday morning, nine bankers returned to their workplace in London’s financial district for an extraordinary meeting. It was Feb. 2, 2019, and the Lunar New Year holiday would soon halt operations at the Beijing headquarters of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.Five thousand miles from the Chinese capital, the bank officers made their way through the lobby of ICBC’s London branch, housed inside an imposing building a short walk from London Bridge. The bank’s managers had called them in on the weekend with a request: Swiftly transfer $1.3 billion for an important client, the Chinese tech giant Huawei.
The company needed to repatriate its “emergency cash,” according to confidential ICBC records reviewed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The bankers suspected that the urgency might have something to do with a recent scandal making international headlines. “[I]t was probably the negative news,” Chenhu Liu, a senior bank officer who attended the meeting, later told an internal auditor.
Five days earlier, the U.S. Justice Department had unsealed an indictment accusing Huawei of fraud, violating sanctions on Iran and other crimes. (Huawei has denied wrongdoing, and the case is being tried in New York.) The company’s chief financial officer — the founder’s daughter — was under house arrest in Canada after being detained at the request of the U.S.
The incident triggered an unprecedented diplomatic spat as Chinese authorities retaliated by detaining two Canadians on spurious espionage charges. And yet, in London, the criminal case did not deter the ICBC officers from fulfilling Huawei’s request within a matter of hours. The transaction, while not illegal, reveals how readily ICBC’s London branch bypassed ordinary banking protocols to satisfy the demands of its Chinese parent, especially when a strategic client — one that had come to symbolize China’s technological advancement — needed a helping hand.
The logo of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China at its offices in London. Image: May James/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Huawei was not the only politically connected client to benefit from special treatment at ICBC London. A tranche of 4.8 million confidential bank records spanning 20 years shows how ICBC officers ignored red flags and breached internal anti-money laundering policies under pressure from the bank’s Beijing headquarters. At times, the demands of the Chinese parent led to clashes between eager-to-please managers and compliance officers — the bank’s internal watchdogs — who feared risky clients could jeopardize ICBC’s reputation.
The findings are part of China Capital, an ICIJ investigation with 23 media partners that provides an unprecedented look into how China’s domestic priorities and global ambitions dictate the daily operations of one of its most powerful financial arms. The records, including client dossiers, due diligence reports, meeting minutes and internal emails in English and Chinese, expose the inner workings of ICBC’s U.K. subsidiary and London branch, and the crucial role ICBC London has played in propelling Beijing’s favorites onto the world stage.
The years after Xi Jinping became China’s president in 2013 heralded a golden era in the U.K.’s relationship with the Asian superpower. As it enthusiastically courted Chinese investment, the British government eased rules introduced after the 2008 financial crisis to protect the banking system from international shocks. As long as certain foreign banks served big corporate clients, instead of retail customers, they could open branches in London to move vast sums in and out of Europe.
Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, left, next to Jiang Jianqing, Chairman of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, as he visits the bank’s Beijing headquarters on Oct. 15, 2013. Image: Jason Lee/Pool via Getty Images
For ICBC, China’s largest state-owned commercial bank, the changes meant its London branch could rapidly expand under the direction of executives in Beijing whose priorities were, and remain, to serve the Chinese Communist Party and push the president’s agenda. At a time when the Xi administration uses financial statecraft to project power worldwide, China Capital raises questions about the ability of regulators in one of the world’s most prominent financial centers to supervise Chinese state banks effectively. ICBC and Huawei did not respond to ICIJ’s repeated requests for comment.
Martin Thorley, who wrote a book about the party-state’s influence in the U.K., described ICBC and other Chinese banks as a “different beast” compared with their international peers because “they have to make sure they operate within the party’s red lines, and that shapes behavior.” This, he said, presents a challenge to the U.K. and other countries’ security and sovereignty.
“If you’re a Chinese entity and you have to choose between following the guidance of British regulators or the party back home, there is only one winner there, and it’s not the British regulator,” said Thorley, who’s also a senior analyst at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. “It’s an existential question.”
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FAQs Frequently asked questions about the China Capital investigation Sep 14, 2026
Recommended reading OVERVIEW Chinese banking giant serves firms linked to oligarchs and autocrats to push Beijing’s agenda Sep 14, 2026 FAQs Frequently asked questions about the China Capital investigation Sep 14, 2026 CORRUPTION ICBC promoted corrupt executive, ignored employee misconduct as it pursued global expansion Sep 14, 2026
">(Ludid not respond to ICIJ’s request for comment.)
In reality, the bank’s risk officers had reason for concern. In 2015, along with another bank, ICBC London had approved a $351.5 million loan for a subsidiary of Sanpower, the Chinese real estate conglomerate controlled by Yuan Yafei, a tycoon who was then a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body. The former government official turned entrepreneur acquired the British department store chain House of Fraser during a buying spree of Western brands, promising to revive the indebted retailer that had once owned Harrods. Instead, the company soon became insolvent, putting thousands of jobs at risk. ICBC faced a loss of more than $125 million, records show. Sanpower did not respond to ICIJ’s requests for comment.
A permanently shuttered House of Fraser department store in the center of the British town of Middlesbrough. Image: Daniel Harvey Gonzalez/In Pictures via Getty Images
The bank’s London branch recovered at least $29 million in 2019 following a meeting with the client in Nanjing, according to an internal memo. Ruixiang Han, ICBC London’s top executive at the time, explained the reason for the original risky lending decision during an internal meeting: “namely the involvement of a strong Chinese parent, Sanpower.”
No client tested the relationship between the bank’s compliance officers in London and their managers in Beijing more than Huawei — the symbol of the U.S.-China battle for technological supremacy.
Huawei was founded in 1987 by a former military engineer as a small reseller of imported telephone switches. Within a decade, it prevailed over competitors to supply innovative network equipment to the Chinese army and other government bodies, earning the “national champion” status reserved for firms that bolster Beijing’s strategic aims. The Chinese government backed its international ambitions and used it as a “tool of diplomacy” in developing countries lacking digital infrastructure, according to Antonia Hmaidi, a senior analyst at the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, center, during a visit to Huawei’s London office on Oct. 21, 2015. Xi’s trip marked the first state visit by a Chinese leader to the U.K. in over a decade. Image: Xinhua/Rao Aimin via Getty Images
But Huawei’s expansion, at home and abroad, was mired in controversy. The company sold cellphones to consumers and network equipment to the world’s largest telecom operators. It also supplied its technology to oppressive regimes in Iraq and Iran, according to U.S. intelligence. Huawei files also showed the company promoted facial recognition technology that was deployed in China’s Xinjiang autonomous region, where Xi’s government has orchestrated a repression campaign against the Muslim Uyghur minority through mass internment, pervasive surveillance and forced labor.
In the summer of 2018, despite mounting U.S. pressure over concerns Huawei’s networks could be used for espionage, the telecom powerhouse was in full expansion mode. The company is known for its “warrior” culture and a refusal to “admit defeat,” Hmaidi said, and it had the government and state banks at its side.
ICBC considered Huawei “a strategic customer” and provided loans, cash management and other services, the records show. At the time, the company’s account with ICBC’s branch in Shenzhen, where Huawei is headquartered, had an average daily balance of about $1.2 billion and “wealth management products” worth $7.3 billion.
When Huawei opened an account for a U.K. subsidiary with ICBC London, it was classified as a “going out” customer, referring to Chinese companies that need financial support to expand overseas. The subsidiary, Huawei Global Finance UK Ltd., provided financial services to other Huawei entities around the world and increased ICBC London’s total client deposits by about 66%, the records show. Then in December 2018, breaking news triggered an alert in the bank’s internal system, according to an operational incident report and other confidential ICBC records.
Around 11 a.m., on Dec. 1, Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s CFO and the founder’s daughter, disembarked from a Cathay Pacific flight at Vancouver International Airport. She was waiting to board her connecting flight to Mexico when Canadian border agents stopped her for questioning. Canadian federal police formally arrested her hours later. Closed-circuit television footage from that morning showed Meng wearing comfortable clothing: a T-shirt, dark pants and white shoes. She had no idea that the U.S. had issued a warrant for her arrest on fraud charges related to violations of sanctions against Iran, her father, Ren Zhengfei, later told Canadian media.
Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei, center, leaves an extradition hearing in Vancouver, British Columbia, on May 27, 2020. Image: Darryl Dyck/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The arrest of such a high-profile executive sent shockwaves around the world. Nine days later, Chinese authorities retaliated by detaining two Canadians in Beijing and Dandong. A Vancouver court soon released Meng under house arrest after payment of her $7.5 million bail. The Canadians — a former diplomat and a consultant — would remain in their prison cells for more than 1,000 days.
Supporters of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor take part in a walk in Ottawa, Ontario, to mark 1,000 days after the Canadians were imprisoned on espionage charges. Image: Lars Hagberg/AFP via Getty Images
In London, ICBC officers closely monitored the news for nearly two months. Then, a day after the U.S. Justice Department indicted Meng and Huawei for sanctions violations, money laundering and other crimes, the bankers called an emergency meeting. ICBC London compliance officers and senior managers agreed to temporarily suspend business with Huawei until it provided information needed to assess whether its deposited funds were associated with the alleged crimes. Instead of supplying the information, Huawei’s U.K. managers demanded an urgent, in-person meeting with the bankers, the bank records show.
Late Friday afternoon, on Feb. 1, 2019, Huawei representatives visited ICBC London’s office on King William Street with a request, according to a memo detailing the events. Huawei wanted to withdraw all of its subsidiary’s deposits — “quickly.”
During the meeting, two of the bank’s senior managers, Chenhu Liu and Xiao Lu, sought “to prevent the transaction from taking place,” the memo said. Huawei was, after all, one of the branch’s largest depositors, and withdrawing the funds would have amounted to a significant loss. But these efforts “proved fruitless.” Huawei’s executives had already asked the bank’s headquarters in Beijing to approve the transfer. The request had been greenlit.
The following day, at 8 a.m. in London, ICBC executives in Beijing held a conference call with the nine London officers called in to facilitate the transfer. The executives told the bankers that ICBC’s headquarters would ensure the branch had enough funds to finance its operations, according to the bank files. That morning, the officers wired $1.3 billion from Huawei’s ICBC account in London to its account in Shenzhen.
The news of the transfer only reached the branch’s compliance team on Monday, raising alarm bells. Eric Guegan, ICBC London’s money laundering reporting officer at the time, launched an internal investigation and interviewed the officers involved in the transaction over the next two weeks. (Guegan did not respond to ICIJ and The Times’ requests for comment.)
“It is unusual to execute payments outside of London business hours[,] and by mobilising a team to come in on a Saturday to execute significant payments increases the possibility for fraud,” Guegan said, according to an internal memo. He believed his colleagues should have completed a thorough investigation before releasing the funds but noted their decision was made “under pressure from Huawei” and Beijing headquarters.
Guegan flagged that the transfer raised ethical issues: ICBC’s China corporate team had ignored the earlier decision to suspend business with Huawei and executed the transfer without checking if the funds were linked to the alleged crimes. And some of those London officers had not challenged ICBC executives’ view that the U.S. government allegations were unsubstantiated and politically motivated, he wrote. He described their eagerness to please the head office as “unorthodox.”
“There is a possibility that Huawei were seeking to repatriate funds in order to avoid asset freezing by US Sanctions investigators,” Guegan concluded. “The relationship with [head office] requires review and we need to think about when to push back.”
There is a possibility that Huawei were seeking to repatriate funds in order to avoid asset freezing by US Sanctions investigators.
— ICBC London’s money laundering reporting officer in an internal memo
He then emailed ICBC London executives recommending “enhanced due diligence” on Huawei — a standard procedure for customers accused of wrongdoing. Within 15 minutes, Han, the CEO, replied, relaying clear instructions from headquarters: “carry on business with Huawei.” The message echoed an earlier one from ICBC’s Shenzhen branch, which had requested that all ICBC overseas subsidiaries “support Huawei in terms of the opening of new accounts and the possible expansion of business,” according to internal emails.
Indeed, the tech giant wanted to partner with ICBC London to open a new cash account to facilitate the group’s payment of suppliers, payroll and other expenses internationally. Later that month, Huawei’s U.K. managers invited Guegan and four other ICBC London officers for a morning meeting at Huawei’s London office, in a modern skyscraper nearby. Huawei’s compliance manager, Nelson Wang, dialed in from Shenzhen.
Wang explained some of the company’s new policies, underscoring the U.K. subsidiary’s independence and renewed focus on compliance. Huawei, he said, was “not a financial institution but a telecoms company” and therefore had less strict regulatory obligations than a bank. He acknowledged that Huawei was still operating in Syria, as well as two other U.S.-sanctioned countries, Iran and Cuba, where he estimated it made $13 million annually — 1.5% of its global revenue. He added that Huawei may do business with some sanctioned Russian entities but, he said, transactions linked to those activities would be flagged internally and would not go through ICBC London.
The meeting lasted less than two hours. Guegan described it as “cordial” and “held in a transparent manner,” in an internal report. But he had reservations about Huawei’s anti-bribery and corruption policy, which “was not explained convincingly,” he wrote.
As Iran’s largest trading partner, China has continued to provide digital infrastructure, including Huawei 5G cell networks, despite U.S. sanctions. Image: Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Other ICBC branches had their own concerns about keeping Huawei as a client because of its murky ownership structure, the report said. Huawei had claimed that the majority of its shares were then owned by about 100,000 employees through an employee shareholding scheme. “As of today, no independent evidence exists that can verify whether or not the information regarding the ownership and the management of Huawei Union and the Chinese Government’s involvement is factual,” said an internal ICBC London memo. Huawei has long insisted that it’s not state owned or controlled, but U.S. officials and international researchers have questioned whether its executives and shareholders are truly independent.
A few weeks after the meeting at Huawei’s London office, an external due diligence firm concluded that Huawei was a “Very high risk” client for ICBC London because of its alleged links to the Chinese government and corruption, fraud and other criminal allegations in multiple countries, from the U.S. to the Solomon Islands and Brazil. But none of that mattered to ICBC’s executives. In his final report, Guegan wrote that senior management had fought a “sustained campaign” to retain the business. By October 2019, he had resigned.
“I’m sure the pressure would be exerted from all sides to make sure the relationship is working as smoothly as possible and push the boundaries of legal requirements to the limit,” said Graham Barrow, an anti-money laundering expert and former consultant for major banks. “Ultimately [Huawei and ICBC] share the same allegiance, which is back to China,” Barrow told ICIJ.
re from their most powerful ally, the U.K. and several other countries moved to ban local cell providers from buying Huawei 5G equipment, citing national security concerns.ICBC remained a valuable ally for the besieged company. The bank opened new accounts for Huawei in Sydney and Frankfurt, according to an internal report. And to show its “commitment” to helping Huawei counter U.S. sanctions and diversify its funding, ICBC became one of the main underwriters in the company’s first domestic bond sale, worth about $850 million. The Chinese government came to the rescue and “ensured their survival,” said Hmaidi, the China tech expert. “No one else would have given them a loan in this situation because no one knew what was going to happen.”
In 2020, after the U.S. imposed sanctions on Huawei, the British government reversed its decision to conditionally allow the tech giant to provide equipment for the U.K.’s 5G networks. Image: Tolga Akmen / AFP
In London, the records show, a group of senior officers reviewed the handling of the Huawei transfer during a conference call with headquarters’ senior bankers and dismissed some of the mistakes as past mishaps. “[The] case demonstrated the bad culture the Bank had at the time,” Robert Clark, ICBC London chief risk officer, told his colleagues. Jingtang Xie, who headed the Overseas Anti Money Laundering Division in Beijing, suggested that the bank introduce new rules to ensure compliance officers had to approve large transactions to avoid similar problems in the future. “Lessons should be learned for the Bank to strengthen future controls,” Xie said.
In response to ICIJ’s questions, Clark, who retired last year, said that ICBC London has always complied with U.K. regulations. In a message to ICIJ, he declined to comment on the Huawei case but noted that “for Head Office in Beijing [Huawei] was and no doubt remains a priority client.” He added: “The sensitivities around Huawei were well-understood in 2019 and … we acted to protect ICBC London from any regulatory breaches.”
ICBC London ultimately decided to keep Huawei’s U.K. subsidiary as a client and support the company’s global ambitions. In Africa, records show, the bank leveraged Beijing’s influence and trade ties to help some governments acquire Huawei technology by providing financing in renminbi, the Chinese currency. In 2022, ICBC London helped the bank’s Shenzhen branch provide a loan worth about $3 million to a Nigerian bank that was short of U.S. dollars and planned to finance the acquisition of Huawei equipment by MTN Nigeria Communications, one of the country’s largest mobile operators.
ICBC has bankrolled Huawei projects globally for more than 20 years Since 2003, ICBC has committed to more than $2 billion in loans to Huawei or entities seeking to buy Huawei equipment and services. The deals reflect Huawei’s strategic importance for the Chinese bank.
Loan for Huawei equipment
Loan to Huawei
Both
Note: The visualization shows ICBC’s loan commitments and may not reflect how much money was actually disbursed. The countries listed reflect where money was to be spent.
Source: ICBC internal records reviewed by ICIJ and data from AidData.org.
That same year, ICBC London happily announced in an internal strategy plan: “We have become the cash management bank for clients such as Huawei UK.” Even so, Huawei continued to rely on ICBC’s Beijing headquarters — instead of the bank managers in London — when it needed favors for its U.K. subsidiary.
Huawei remained on the branch’s list of high-risk clients that required additional screening. But in early 2023, the tech giant complained that due diligence requirements were slowing payments. ICBC Beijing managers urgently asked ICBC London officers to speed up the process. “The further [cooperation] between ICBC head office and Huawei group may be effected if we could not offer a more efficient payment resolution to them,” a Beijing officer told a subordinate in London in an email.
ICBC London officers eventually agreed to let Huawei’s transactions go through the account first and then request related information and documents later — just like other ICBC branches in Europe were doing. A bank officer passed on the usual message to her London colleagues: “Head office also mentioned that Huawei is an very important client to them.”
Pedestrians pass a Huawei advertisement in Lusaka, Zambia, on Dec. 11, 2018. At the time, China was building or financing most of Zambia’s digital infrastructure projects as the country entered a dangerous debt spiral. Image: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Last week, lawyers representing Huawei and the U.S. government gathered in a federal courtroom in New York for the opening statements in the high-profile trial that could decide whether the Chinese company is guilty of violating sanctions laws and other crimes.
“The entire business operated through a pattern of theft, lies and cover-ups,” Justice Department attorney Taylor Stout told the court. “For 20 years, that’s how Huawei … abused the American financial system … to dominate the telecommunication industry around the world.” Brian Heberlig, one of Huawei’s defense lawyers, rejected the accusation. “Huawei earned its success,” he said. “There was no blueprint for crime.”
Nearly eight years after Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou’s arrest, the trial against Huawei began at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn. Image: Jacob Silverman / ICIJ
More than seven years have passed since the Justice Department indicted Huawei. Meng was allowed to return to China in 2021 after reaching an agreement with prosecutors in which she admitted to misleading a global financial institution about Huawei’s business in Iran. The charges against her were later dismissed but prosecutors are still expected to submit her admissions as evidence.
The start of the Huawei trial comes ahead of Xi’s scheduled visit to Washington, D.C., to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump to discuss trade and other sensitive topics. Experts told ICIJ that the verdict will not change the fact that Huawei is one of the world’s most influential tech companies.
Since the indictment, the tech giant has provided critical — and cheap — technology to large parts of the world and become a leading firm in the emerging artificial intelligence industry, according to Tim Rühlig, a senior China analyst at the European Union Institute for Security Studies. “Today, these dependencies are giving China leverage,” Rühlig told ICIJ. “There is a vital interest of the party-state that Huawei stays technologically on top, that it is competitive, that it prospers.”
ICIJ’s Denise Ajiri, Agustin Armendariz, Jelena Cosic, Delphine Reuter and Jacob Silverman contributed reporting.