CHINA hasn't uncovered any large-scale "hot money" inflows since it stared a crackdown on speculative capital, its top foreign exchange regulator said yesterday.

Some "hot money," or speculative money, have sneaked into China under the guise of trade and investment funds but were actually used to speculate in industries, including housing, and to finance activities outside of regular business transactions, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange said yesterday in a statement on its Website.

"Large-scale and organized speculative money inflows haven't been found," said SAFE. "But some banks have been found lacking in preventing the inflow of hot money and some may even be helping the irregular money flows."

SAFE, however, didn't single out any individual banks or cases.

SAFE started to crack down on capital inflows in February in 13 provinces and cities where foreign exchange transaction volumes were large.

It said it has made some progress, pointing out that it found 190 suspected non-compliant cases valued at US$7.35 billion through checking 3.47 million transactions involving over US$440 billion.

It warned that more measures will be stepped up to further curb the inflow of hot money.

Hot money refers to funds which flow into a country to take advantage of a favorable interest rate in order to obtain a higher rate of returns.