BEIJING, Sept. 22(Xinhuanet)-- The People's Bank of China will expand its anti-money laundering special inspection to securities and insurance institutions, a senior banking official said Thursday.

Xiang Junbo, vice governor of the People's Bank of China, made the remark at a high-level seminar on anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism, which was jointly hosted by the People's Bank of China and the World Bank.

From April to December 2004, the People's Bank of China conducted special inspections on commercial banks' compliance with anti-money laundering regulations, making commercial banks pay more attention to the supervision over non-banking areas such as the transactions of real estate, and jewel and cultural item auctions, Xiang said.

The provincial branches of the People's Bank of China will continue its special inspections on anti-money laundering this year, he said.

In April 2004, the People's Bank of China built up the China anti-money laundering Monitoring and Analyzing Center, which is responsible for collecting and analyzing information of Renminbi and foreign exchange in respect of anti-money laundering work, he said.

Since the establishment of the center, the People's Bank of China and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange have provided 1,500 pieces of suspicious anti-money laundering clue to the police, helping them to crack 51 criminal cases in this area. The cases involved 3.096 billion yuan and 460 million US dollars separately.

The People's Bank of China is making research on the coordination and connection among data bases, payment systems and bank account management systems, so as to make its inspection work more efficient.

Meanwhile, the People's Bank of China is making efforts to sign memorandums on information exchange with other countries and regions in this regard, in a bid to face the new situation of more frequent international money-laundering activities. Enditem