The former CEO of the Canadian subsidiary of China’s largest bank says he was instructed to “ignore” Canadian law and “circumvent” Canadian regulators, alleging he was fired for not following these directions.
Lubin Wang, 51, former head of ICBK, the Canadian subsidiary of the state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), China’s largest bank, filed a lawsuit in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice for wrongful dismissal earlier this year, alleging he was pressured to scale back or abandon efforts to comply with Canadian regulations.
Wang says his efforts to reform ICBK’s operations to comply with recently adopted Canadian legislation—including the Foreign Influence Transparency and Accountability Act, passed in 2024, and a 2023 law expanding federal oversight of regulated institutions—were met with “opposition and obvious discontent” from senior leadership at ICBC, the bank’s parent company in the People’s Republic of China (PRC)….