The head of China's central bank's Digital Currency Institute, Yao Qian, has been expelled from the Communist Party and removed from government office over alleged cryptocurrency-related corruption.
According to China's anti-corruption authorities, Yao "grossly violated discipline and the law" and falsely presented himself as a financial technology expert, "sparing no effort to support specific technology service providers for his own personal gain."
Authorities also accused Yao of abuse of office and using cryptocurrency for illegal transactions. Law enforcement found that the former head of the digital currency department illegally received an “extremely large sum” for his services. The amount of the bribe has not yet been disclosed.
Yao, born in 1970, was appointed the first head of the central bank's digital currency research institute in 2017. He moved from the financial department to the country's securities regulator in 2018.
Yao has been active in discussions surrounding blockchain and cryptocurrencies, and in 2022, he released a book that covered topics such as DAO , DeFi , NFT In April of this year, Yao published an article titled “Warnings of new bitcoin ETF , which made a splash in the United States" on the Chinese financial news portal Caixin.
