Jailed Banker Was Collateral Damage in China Fugitive Hunt
This should give you pause if you're thinking of working in Chinese finance: A Singaporean banker has just been released after nearly three months in detention, and ordered to stay in China for another year, because she worked for a client who fled the country as a fugitive.
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According to The Wall Street Journal's James T. Areddy, the Standard Chartered banker, Wu Yidian Eden, never did get charged with a crime. Per Areddy: "Wu, 31, was detained since March 6, when police in the Chinese city of Wuxi said in a notice to her family that she was being held on suspicion of harboring criminals." The fugitive, Sun Feng, "is suspected of leaving China late in 2011 with an unspecified amount of money that wasn't his," but police haven't said whether they're any closer to catching him. It's all very close to the vest, but the upshot is this foreign national, working for a major bank, spent more than two months in detention basically as collateral damage in a case against her client. The lesson: When you're working for China's moneyed elites, you'd better hope they behave.
