Shenzhen police gather information on online lenders as China cracks down

[SHANGHAI] Police in Shenzhen have started collecting information from the city's peer-to-peer (P2P) lenders, as part of a campaign to regulate China's fast-growing but risk-fraught online financing sector, the official Securities Times reported.

Shenzhen's move came after the collapse of Ezubao, the country's biggest online P2P lender, which is accused of defrauding 900,000 investors of more than 50 billion yuan (S$10.2 billion).

As of the end of March, 1,490 P2P platforms in China had run into operational problems, and bosses at more than half of them had absconded.

China has been tightening supervision over the country's loosely regulated P2P and wealth management industry, but the southern city of Shenzhen is the first Chinese city to take such action, the article said.

Some P2P companies in Shenzhen have received registration forms from police, requiring them to provide information including details of shareholders and executives, the number of clients and payment accounts, the newspaper reported.

REUTERS