(Reuters) – Chinese officials insist tough new eligibility rules will put a stop to the type of “age cheat” scandal that saw a gymnast stripped of her Olympic medal.
Dong Fangxiao had to return her women’s gymnastics team bronze medal from the 2000 Sydney Olympics earlier this year following an International Olympic Committee (IOC) probe.
Chinese sports officials promised that tighter checks introduced after the scandal would eradicate the problem.
China’s delegation chief for next month’s Youth Olympic Games in Singapore said the country had adopted a zero tolerance policy toward potential cheats.
“We’ve scrutinized every athlete’s age for the Youth Olympic Games to make sure there is no one going to Singapore with a fake age,” Cai Zhenhua told Thursday’s China Daily.
“We have to make our Chinese delegation very clean and transparent. This is for the benefit of the athletes and the fair play spirit of the Olympics.”
The inaugural Youth Olympics in Singapore begin on August 14 and showcases potential future senior Olympic athletes aged from 14 to 18.
Stringent documentation checks on China’s 70-strong squad have been carried out in addition to X-ray bone analysis on the team’s under-16s, Cai added.
Suspicions of age-faking have dogged Chinese sport for years.
Dong registered different ages at Sydney and the 2008 Beijing Games, where she served as a technical official.
Her five team mates — Yang Yun, Liu Xuan, Ling Jie, Huang Mandan, Kui Yuanyuan — also lost their medals.
At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China’s He Kexin, a women’s team and uneven bars gold medalist, was also investigated but subsequently passed as eligible.
(Reporting by Alastair Himmer in Tokyo. Editing by Peter Rutherford)
C.Suisse starts shutting US offshore accounts-report
C.Suisse closing down some U.S. offshore accounts
* Move comes after rival UBS came under probe
ZURICH, April 12 (Reuters) – Swiss bank Credit Suisse (CSGN.VX) has started closing down the offshore accounts of U.S. clients who have not declared the money to the U.S. authorities, a newspaper reported on Sunday.
The Sonntagszeitung newspaper said the bank had about 2,500-5,000 U.S. clients with undeclared offshore accounts worth about 3 billion francs, without citing its sources.
The paper said Credit Suisse had started parting company with its U.S. offshore clients, giving them the option of moving their accounts to its CS Private Advisors subsidiary, which would report the accounts to the U.S. tax authorities, or writing them a cheque.
It quoted an unnamed Credit Suisse manager as saying the bank was only applying the new “zero tolerance” policy in individual cases for now but was considering a more general withdrawal from the U.S. offshore business.
Credit Suisse was not immediately available for comment on the article. Sonntagszeitung quoted a spokesman as declining to confirm the report, but noting the tougher approach of foreign authorities on offshore wealth management in recent times.
“CS sticks to all valid rules and regulations in various countries,” a spokesman told the newspaper.
The move comes after rival UBS (UBSN.VX)(UBS.N) said last year it would stop offering offshore services to U.S. citizens after U.S. authorities alleged that the Swiss bank has helped rich Americans hide money away from the taxman in Swiss accounts.
A newspaper reported earlier this year that Credit Suisse was writing to its U.S. clients holding Swiss accounts asking them to sign a form that would reveal them to U.S. tax authorities. (Reporting by Emma Thomasson; editing by Mike Nesbit)