China Says Wells Fargo Executive ‘Involved in a Criminal Case’

A U.S.-based Wells Fargo executive who was recently blocked from leaving China is under criminal investigation, China’s Foreign Ministry announced Monday, offering no further details about the charges she faces or the expected duration of her exit ban.

Mao Chenyue, who was born in Shanghai but works in Atlanta as a managing director at Wells Fargo Bank, has been barred from leaving China, foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun confirmed. The Wall Street Journal first reported the ban, citing people familiar with the matter.

Wells Fargo said Friday that it was “working through the appropriate channels” to secure her return to the United States.

It was not immediately clear whether Mao had an American passport, or if she remained a Chinese citizen. Reuters reported last week that Mao is a U.S. citizen.

“Ms. Mao Chenyue is involved in a criminal case currently handled by Chinese law enforcement authorities and she is subject to exit restrictions in accordance with the law,” Guo said at a news briefing Monday. “Chinese and foreigners alike have to abide by Chinese laws. China will protect her lawful rights and interests throughout the investigation,” he said.

Exit bans in China generally require a lower threshold from authorities than indictments and formal detentions, experts told The Washington Post, and the county’s sweeping national security law has allowed for individuals to face travel bans for actions that would be considered legal in other countries.

Beijing has added to the number of laws regarding exit bans since 2018, according to a 2023 report from the rights group Safeguard Defenders, expanding the ambiguity surrounding activities that could run afoul of the rules.

While the reasons for the criminal investigation into Mao remain unclear, experts say that exit bans and criminal investigations can sometimes be used as a way create leverage to use against adversarial parties, such as particular businesses or the United States.

“These are political, tit-for-tat measures that China sometimes can use,” said Simona Grano, a China expert at the University of Zurich. “It wouldn’t be the first time they actually use these kind of measures exactly at the right moment to send some political signaling or even to blackmail or coerce a country.”

A Chinese American who works for the U.S. Commerce Department is also facing an exit ban after he failed to disclose on his visa application that he worked for the U.S. government, The Post reported Sunday, citing four people familiar with the matter. They spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

The man, whose name was not disclosed, was on a trip to visit family members and was employed by the Patent and Trademark Office.

There are at least several dozen Americans, many of them ethnic Chinese, who are under exit bans, experts and former officials said. The exact number is difficult to ascertain because typically these cases come to the attention of U.S. authorities through self-reporting, and most do not learn they’ve been placed under a ban until they try to leave, or they don’t want to call attention to the case and make resolution more difficult.

Both bans punctuate Washington and Beijing’s increasingly strained relations as the Trump administration remains locked in a trade war against China and views the world’s second largest economy as a geopolitical rival.