Ex-head of Postal Savings Bank faces graft charges

The former head of one of China's largest banks has been charged with corruption, authorities said on Wednesday.

Tao Liming, ex-president of the Postal Savings Bank of China, is accused of taking bribes and embezzling public funds, the Supreme People's Procuratorate said in a statement.

The State-owned bank, a spin-off from the post office, has the country's largest network of banking outlets.

Its website describes it as China's fifth-largest banking institution by client and deposit numbers.

Tao became head of the bank in 2007 but came under investigation for graft in 2012. He was arrested in December that year.

Corruption in business and political circles has repeatedly been singled out by top leaders as the biggest danger to face the Communist Party of China.

President Xi Jinping has pledged to root out high-ranking "tigers" as well as low-level "flies" in his anti-graft sweep.

The Postal Savings Bank violated rules to lend a highway construction company in Hunan province 5 billion yuan ($812 million) between 2008 and 2010, China Business Journal reported two years ago.

Tao's younger brother asked for 190 million yuan in bribes and the company paid 15 million yuan in cash and the rest in other forms, the newspaper said.

In 2010, Chinese courts gave a former China Development Bank vice-president a suspended death sentence for taking bribes in return for providing loans to businesses.