China's foreign exchange regulator said it raided 86 black market money exchanges in the first nine months of the year, revealing "billions of yuan" in underground transactions.
The regulator, working with police, confiscated about 50 million yuan (US$6 million) in cash and froze 290 bank accounts with a combined balance of more than 30 million yuan, China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange said in a statement.
It arrested 194 suspects and issued fines totaling 19.43 million yuan, the statement said.
The charges included using illegal operations, fraudulent investing, money laundering, illegal use of yuan to settle foreign-currency denominated transactions, illegal transfers of foreign currency out of China, illegally acquiring bank loans and illegally transferring state-owned assets abroad.
The regulator warned that it will also step up a crackdown on "speculative capital inflows" to preserve financial stability, seeking to deter bets on a yuan revaluation after last week's interest rate increase.
Illegal foreign-exchange settlements by some banks and companies are hampering government efforts to cool growth in the world's seventh-largest economy, SAFE said.
China last week raised its benchmark lending rate for the first time in nine years, stepping up efforts to rein in an economy that expanded 9.5 percent in the first nine months.