(Yicai Global) Feb. 25 -- Chinese authorities have fined China Citic Bank more than CNY20 million (USD2.85 million) for the third time since November 2018.

The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission's Beijing branch recently imposed a CNY20.2 million penalty on the lender for 19 regulatory violations, including illegal issuance of land reserve loans, National Business Daily reported today.

Since last year, fines in excess of CNY20 million are no longer unusual in China's banking sector. The biggest was the CNY29 million slap on the wrist Bank of China's Jilin branch received from the CBIRC's local bureau in October.

Most of Citic Bank's latest breaches were related to the real estate sector and also included the diversion of personal operating loan funds for housing purchases, and the misappropriation of credit funds into property developers as well as illegal provision of liquidity financing for real estate development enterprises.

Its violations not related to real estate included carelessness in the development of trust consumer loans, diverting liquidity loans to equity investments, non-authentic transfers of bad credit assets, and fiduciary payments that do not meet regulatory requirements.

Shares of Citic Bank [SHA:601998] fell 1.6 percent today to CNY5.55 (79 US cents) each. The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index ended down 0.6 percent.

The CBIRC fined the bank CNY22.2 million last July for issuing property development loans in the name of working capital loans, and failure to include real estate business loans in the real estate development loan account. It was fined CNY22.8 million in November 2018 for using "illegal financial management funds and self-funded financing to pay land payments illegally."

Editor: Peter Thomas