The incident at the rural town bank in Henan happened four years ago, with numerous depositors failing in their attempts to protect their rights, and the deposits of thousands of them remaining inaccessible to this day.
According to a report by “Phoenix Weekly” on May 21st, recently, depositors with “Type A cards” at the rural town bank in Henan have reflected that since the incident at the bank in 2022, their deposits have been unable to be withdrawn and have been set to “in only, not out.” There are still several thousand customers like him. After four years since the incident, the bank cards of the rural town bank in Henan have become obsolete.
As a result, the lives of many depositors have fallen into difficulty. Retired worker Wang Hui sold his old house for 2 million yuan and has been unable to withdraw the house payment to this day. His son’s wedding has been repeatedly postponed, and the whole family is engulfed in anxiety and helplessness; Wang Xingguo, a textile businessman who has been deeply involved in the textile industry for many years, had 30 million yuan of factory working capital forcibly frozen, making it impossible to purchase raw materials, maintain orders, and pay salaries, putting his long-operated business on the brink of bankruptcy; Zhou Mingju, who does business in Shanghai, continues to fight for the recovery of 10 million yuan in savings, but remains trapped in difficulties. Some depositors have even experienced family breakdown and personal tragedies.
Over the past four years, depositors from all over the country have successively initiated civil lawsuits, but have faced only two types of outcomes: either the cases are ultimately transferred to the Yuzhou City Court in Henan Province, which either does not file the cases or delays them, or the cases are directly rejected by the court on the grounds of criminal involvement. Although some depositors have complained to the Supreme People’s Court of the Communist Party through proxy lawyers about this matter, they have not received any response to date.
According to reports, the root cause of this incident is not poor management, but a systematic financial crime organized by the Henan New Wealth Group. The group has long been covertly manipulating the core management of multiple rural town banks by forging loan agreements, altering bank accounting data, illicitly absorbing public deposits off the books, continuously transferring and misappropriating massive amounts of depositor funds, depleting the assets of multiple rural town banks, and finally triggering a crisis of payment in April 2022, leading to the major turmoil known as the “Henan Rural Town Bank Incident.”
Starting on April 18, 2022, four rural town banks in Henan Province, including Yuzhou Xinminsheng Rural Town Bank, Shangcai Huimin Rural Town Bank, Zhecheng Huanghuai Rural Town Bank, and Kaifeng Xindongfang Rural Town Bank, almost simultaneously closed their online withdrawal and transfer services without warning, causing depositors unable to withdraw their funds and triggering widespread panic among depositors. Subsequently, depositors began several rounds of rights protection and protest activities. According to previous reports, the incident involved at least hundreds of billions of yuan in funds, affecting around 400,000 depositors.
Among these depositors are national civil servants, bank employees, senior accountants, as well as teachers, doctors, lawyers, and even employees from the public security and procuratorate systems.
Previously reported incidents:
Thousands of depositors from rural town banks in Henan collectively protect their rights and are forcibly repatriated.
Three thousand depositors protest in Zhengzhou, with authorities using 40 buses to arrest people.
Difficulty in withdrawing funds from rural town banks in Henan, causing health codes of out-of-province depositors to unexpectedly turn red.